The Birmingham age-herald., 1918-07-28
Manchester. N. II.

Manchester, N. H.
 C7N HE shoe of the soldier I have
 a pair of the largest worn in
 ll the trenches before me as l am
 writing these notes They have been made after recommendations sent over by General Pershing, and they are larger and better than any shoe former ly supplied to the army. The shoes worn by civilians range in size from lives to elevens or twelves. Ex-Presi- dent Taft wears No. 15, but he has his shoes made to order. They are made by a company here in Massachusetts
 The new sizes made for the soldier range from S1a to 15. The shoes on my desk are No. 15. They are so large that I could put the No. s I have on inside one and it would rattle around like q pea in a pod. They are heavy. The old army shoe weighs about three pounds per pair The new ones weigh two pounds more. They have a steel horse shoe round the heel and a steel tip at the toe, well suited for bootng the Kaiser or any boche that may come over the top. The sole is plated with hob nails, and a row of hobs extends in and around the inner edge of the heel.
 The leather of the new army shoes is the finest that can be procured. The uppers are as smooth and soft as glove, but thick and heavy, with the grain side out and the smooth side next tho foot. I put my hand inside one of the shoes and felt about for tacks or rough places There are none. The tongues are sewed to the uppers which come high up over the instep. The shoes have cotton lace strings and the eyelets are brass. The. leather is bark tanned and waterproof The sole is heavy, and especially fitted for work in the trenches. The large sizes are due to the need of roomy, we'll fitting shoes for marching, and also to the fact that the men in the trenches often wear two or three pairs of stockings, one over the other, to keep out the cold. They sometimes soak their stockings with tallow, which adds to their thickness.
 The soldiers must have the right kind of shoe in order to do their work we'll Tn the Franco-P -Prussian war not less than 30,000 German soldiers were at one time incapacitated for field service on account of bad feet, ana before this war began per cent of the German army was found unit Tor military service through sore feet, due to bad shoes. In our civil war whole brigades were temporarily disabled by bad shoes, and after several days marching one-fourth of the infantry would have sore feet. It was the quick step of Stonewall Jacksons foot-cav- airy that gave the south its victory at the second battle of Bull Run; and Waterloo was lost because the French endorsements failed to arrive. Both Napoleon and Wellington, the leaders of that battle, realized the value of good footgear. Napoleon said he made war not so much with the arms as with the legs of his troops, and Wellington designed boot which was worn by the British army for years.
 Prior to- the present war our army shoe board spent several years stuay- ing the feet of the soldiers and de- signing the service shoe which was used up to the time we sent men to France The head of that board was Edward Lyman Munson, lieutenant colonel of the medical corps, who has written a -book on the soldiers foot and the military shoe. In this he gives the resultsrof experiments made upon l the feet of our army. In 1908 bat | talion of infantry marched eight miles | and then scamped for 24 hours The l next day it returned. The army shoes board found that 30 per cent of the l men had severe foot injuries after | their eight-mile tramp, and that many | of them required hospital treatment. 1 In later marches in shoes designed and | fitted by the board the most of the l men got through without injury.
 In ordinary marching Colonel Nun | son estimates that the soldier takes Il !