What are felt boots and how they look, probably everyone knows, at least from pictures and photographs. During the Great Patriotic War, they were the main type of footwear in winter. They very well protected the feet of the soldiers from the cold in severe frosts and, naturally, worn out.
As soon as the weather conditions changed and it got warm outside, the servicemen changed their shoes. They changed their shoes into tarpaulin boots, and felt boots were sent to the rear for repairs. Artels were engaged in it. There were even special instruction manuals. One of them, entitled "Repair of Felted Army Shoes", was digitized and today everyone can get acquainted with it.
With the onset of spring, felt boots were delivered to army warehouses, to collection points, where they first underwent disinfection and sorting. They were divided into those that can be used, requiring some repair, and those that can no longer be worn.
In most cases, footwear fell into disrepair in the sole area. Damage in the form of burn-throughs was slightly less common. They appeared as a result of drying products on a fire. Another category of felt boots - collected from the battlefield. They were filmed from the killed soldiers. It was impossible to remove the boots as a whole from the cooled, numb corpse. Therefore, they were cut at the bootleg, repaired, and again handed over to the soldiers. With such seams, many fighters refused to put on shoes, realizing who it belonged to earlier. But, unfortunately, there was not much choice.
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Products that had undergone disinfection, washing and drying were straightened on special blocks and a new felt sole was sewn onto them. Well, those that were removed from the corpses were sewn at the site of the incision near the heel.
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For the foremen who were engaged in repair activities, norms were established. For eight working hours, one person was obliged to hem seven old boots with a new sole or sew forty patches by hand. To increase the level of productivity, division of labor was practiced. That is, the entire repair process was carried out in stages. A separate person was responsible for each such stage. One worker put the felt boots on the shoes, another prepared the spoiled felt boot, the third sewed the soles, the fourth cut and patched.
By the way, the German soldiers also had felt boots, called "ersatz boots." Shoes were straw, something like bast shoes, only with tar impregnation. But these shoes were cold. Therefore, capturing another village, the Germans simply took our Russian felt boots.
Continuing the topic read, for what merits the soldiers of the Wehrmacht received a medal for "frozen meat".
A source: https://novate.ru/blogs/240520/54625/