Boots, hobnails and supply

[rob carman]

The following is summarized from an unpublished unit history by Lt Col JR Harvey, 1/4 Bn, Norfolk Regiment and CO from 1910 to December 1916, and from Norfolk CTA records held in the The Archive Centre, Norfolk Record Office, Martineau Ln, Norwich.

 

13 August 1914 Kit continued to be a problem.  Now it was the men’s boots.  The troops had joined their units wearing their old boots.  New recruits were wearing their own boots.  Replacements were not issued.  Lt Col Harvey claims that shortly afterwards, some men were marching “on their socks”.  

 

22 September 1914  The problems with kit continued and Harvey was becoming increasingly frustrated.  After several fruitless polite requests (“many demands”) for issues of new underwear and boots, he felt it necessary to approach the County Association directly and with vigour.  In early September, he told its members the battalion had been “practically in rags for the want of clothing, and almost bootless and shirtless.”  Chairman Sir Allan Fellowes and committee member, Col. HTS Patteson arrived from Norwich to assess the situation.  This apparent influence with his peers may have been deceptive as around this time, Fellowes and Patteson called on all the Norfolks’s territorial units, including 2/4 and 2/5Bn and ensured each got new uniforms that began arriving in November

 

12 November 1914  Deliveries from the CTA of replacement boots and clothing began to arrive at 1/4 Bn.  Within 48h new uniforms had been handed out to 500. 

 

17 January 1915  Harvey remained dissatisfied.  He notes that still only a quarter of the men had serviceable footwear, and the shortfall he continued to blame on the County Association.

 

So I was interested when a photograph, recently offered for sale (nothing to do with me), of some 1/4 Norfolks, taken in Watford, probably between 20 May and 21 July 1915, seemed to provide evidence of a problem.  Is the loss of hobnails routine?  How much does it affect the comfort and further durability of the boot? 

 

Edited 3 April , 2019 by rob carman
grammar

[Dave1418]

Hi

if you look at the soles there is a mixture of hobnails and steel bills which look like tiny nails. The bills were originally used on the earlier B2 boots I believe and were inserted by machine from a roll of steel and then cut. This made for a stronger sole but the sole leather has to be of good quality to hold these. Hobnails were used on the areas of greatest wear so toes and sides etc

regards

Dave

[GRANVILLE]

The hobnailing of the boot was done for a couple of particular reasons. Firstly it enabled the boot to last considerably longer than a boot not hobnailed as without the hobnailing the leather sole simply wears away. The billing process is more to do with holding the layers of leather which form the sole together and does not actually prolong the life of the sole that much. To look at a billed sole, it looks (as Dave above says) like tiny nails, but is in fact a very fine brass spiral thread which effectively screws the leather together. Without the hobnails, the smooth leather soles then become a nightmare to walk and march in, especially on wet grass/mud, as they are then very slippery and so the obvious answer is to hobnail them, the nails providing an element of grip as well as aiding the wear of the sole. The down-side to this is that the nailed boot then becomes potentially dangerous on smooth metalled surfaces such as the infamous French pave, or cobbled lanes, over which they had to march for miles. The nails can prove counter-productive, if not dangerous, and one can imagine some men helping their hob nails to come away from the soles of their boots!

 

David

Edited 4 April , 2019 by GRANVILLE

[Andrew Upton]

A few previous threads that might be of interest:

 

 

 

 

 

 

[rob carman]

I confess I thought the hob nails had fallen out of the billed soles, leaving marks where the nails had been.  You all have explained and illustrated your answers well and I am now much wiser.  Thank you.

It is also good to see that while Joe Sweeney may be gone, his contributions live on.