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Quiet Professional
Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Wherever my ruck finds itself
Posts: 2,972
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Foot Care
This was written by a BTDT on another board. It has been edited from its original version to remove gratuitus offensive language and items not permitted for use at SFAS.
1. When you clip your toenails, you want to ensure that you use a nail clipper with STRAIGHT EDGES. If you look at your standard nail clipper, the edges are almost always shaped in a half-moon configuration, like an arc. Those are fingernail clippers, and should be used only on fingernails. Toenail clippers are always straight.
Straight toenail clippers are LARGER than standard clippers. You have to look hard at the stuff sold at the PX or wherever you are buying your foot care gear. Make sure they are sharp as hell, and that they have a good wide set of handles. Spend more for good quality, and don't be afraid to really bust out the green and buy a good pair of GERMAN clippers.
Toenails should ALWAYS be cut STRAIGHT ACROSS, NEVER IN AN ARC. Look at your fingernails. Typically, for most people who are not genetically one step descended from apes, fingernails are curved. Toenails can be curved, if you are an idiot and have not TRAINED them to grow straight. You will get ingrown toenails, and they hurt real, real bad. When I say that toenails need to be cut straight across, I mean just that. You will see that the nail itself will probably end up being longer at the ends where they protrude from the toe bed, and that is fine. They can be shorter at the center, as long as they are straight across. Cutting them in this way, training them to grow this way, is intended to help prevent them from growing into the SIDES of your toe beds.
If you are too jacked up, go to a podiatrist, explain what you are doing and why, and ask him for his advice. He may be able to just yank them so you can start over and train them from the beginning. Regardless, you need to get all the toe-jam out from under and beside your toenails, and you should do this weekly in garrison, and daily in the bush, at minimum. You may need to clip them more than once a week. When you are in the bush, and your dogs are literally your life, then you will inspect them and maintain them and do whatever is necessary to keep them right every day, sometimes several times a day, conditions permitting.
2. Boot sizing is critical. You especially need to pay attention to boot width. Go to a shoe store, an actual shoe store, and have a competent person size your foot, while you are standing. If you can, "liberate" an "oppressed" foot sizer device, one of those things they use in shoe stores, so you can size your foot while actually wearing a 60 to 80lb ruck on your back. Your foot WILL spread. Know your boot size, and when you get sized in the army, speak up and stand up for yourself, as you will be given boots, but your life will suck far worse if they are the wrong goddamned size. Remember that S4 Civilians are often shitheads sucking on the tit of government service, and they will often try to treat you like a louse and simply throw shit at you. Demand respect, politely, but demand it, and get it, and get your correct goddamned boot size. You will probably want between one half to one inch room in the toe. You want your heel to be secure, and not slip out of the heel cup of the boot. This is important. You will need to snug down the ankle part of the boot to a point where you are not inhibiting blood flow to the foot, but adequately to ensure that your heel does not slip. You do not want your feet sliding around inside your boot.
Depending on the type of boot you get, you may or may not need to shape them to your feet to accelerate or facilitate the "break-in" process. There are a million methods of accomplishing this. Some folks wear their boots in the shower, and then walk around with them wet until they dry on their feet. Some folks just wear their boots for a month until they are broken in the hard way. I used to literally soak my boots in a BUCKET of Neet's Foot Oil, which can be a very expensive proposition if you go to the store and see how much an entire bucket's worth will cost you. The thing is, Neet's Foot Oil breaks down the leather, whether you are using old-style authentic green jungle boots, newer-style black jungle boots, full-leather standard Army-issue boots, or whatever. I have no idea what kind of boots are issued these days, or permitted. But Neet's Foot Oil can make your boots softer than slippers, meaning the uppers will be nice and soft, and waterproof as HELL. When you are a grunt, and you live and die on your feet, no money is too much for the right shit, and Neet's Foot Oil IS the shit. No, I don't own stock or Neet's Foot Oil futures.
3. The Neet's Foot Oil treatment is only appropriate for boots worn in the field. It will ruin all chance for boots to look "normal" or pretty for garrison purposes, but for field boots, you will thank me every day you wear them in the bush if you prepare your field boots in this way. I used to soak my boots, completely immersing them, (at least just the leather part, or completely, if they were all leather boots), for about two weeks. No kidding. Periodically, I would pull the boots out, and rough up the outer surface with a steel brush, carefully. This was so the Neet's Foot Oil could soak in deeper into the leather, completely saturating it. When I came back from the bush, I would clean my boots, then reinsert them into a bucket, or just liberally coat them repeatedly with more layers, to maintain the water repellency and softness.
Boots prepared in this way are completely waterproof. They will leak Neet's Foot Oil onto your socks for awhile after you prepare them (this is ugly, but harmless), but they will last a long time, remain totally waterproof, and require very rare applications of black shoe polish, which means you can skip packing a can of polish and a rag in your ruck. Your boots will stay black, no matter what, and you will not have to polish them. Your boots will get softer than hell, and very comfortable, and you will like them more than tennis shoes. Your boots will be as waterproof or more so than a set of gore tex boots, but they will be a hell of a lot cheaper, even considering the cost of the Neet's Foot Oil (it might cost around $20-30 for enough to immerse your boots, with a bucket large enough to fit both boots in it).
4. Now, let's talk about socks. In the bad, bad bush, where you are in a rain forest like Panama or parts of Colombia, Central America, Peru, the Amazon Basin, that sort of thing.....if you are walking through streams, in streams (sometimes jungle is just too thick, and you have to walk IN the streams, as dangerous as it can be), I never wore socks. My feet were like rocks, anyway, and wearing socks just kept them wetter. You have to dry your feet out under these conditions, and that means sometimes you have to stop, hang your ruck from a tree (carefully, being aware of snakes and ants and spiders and millipedes and shit) put up your goddamned jungle hammock, and get into it to pull foot maintenance, clean your weapon, eat chow, etc. The major part of foot maintenance under extreme conditions can be merely drying your feet out.
Be careful with your sizing. You want to ensure that your socks fit right inside your boots, and that your feet fit correctly inside your boots wearing socks of different sizes. You need to be careful: if your feet slide when wearing just liners, you need to tighten your shit up, or maybe use a half-size smaller. If your boots are too tight when wearing Smart Wool thicker socks (like during the wintertime), then you need to loosen them up, or go a half-size larger. The only difference, generally, between a half-size is like a half-inch in the toe.
5. Ok...where are we.....let's talk about what you do to maintain your feet.
You want to powder your feet at least once a day, regardless of where you are, or what you are doing. And that means right now. You want to use any powder with anti-fungal properties, like Desenex, whatever, and yes, cans cost a shitload (like six bucks!) at the grocery store, while they are FREE in the Army. In garrison, powder your feet when you put your boots on in the morning, after your shower. If your feet are sore, or crampy, massage them, and massage them right. If you don't know how to do that, go get a foot massage from a Rolfer masseuse, and ask them to show you what to do. They can put you to sleep with a fucking foot massage, and teach you how to bring a woman to climax with a foot massage. I shit you not.
In the bush, you powder your feet as needed, whenever possible, depending on what your team leader says, or is appropriate. You do this both to help keep your feet dry, but also to change socks (from wet to dry), to CLEAN your feet, and to stay ahead of fungal infections. If you do get a fungal infection, see your doc and get some stuff for it. There are a variety of drops and creams and stuff that work ok, as long as you use them for a FULL course of treatment, and then continue with good maintenance and prevention using powder.
In sum, you get boots that are the correct size based on what you are doing, where you are doing it, and when; you prepare the boots, breaking them in, waterproofing them; you exercise care in sock selection and sock usage; you practice good foot hygiene, and keep your shit trained and trimmed, and you use both experience and gear to keep your feet dry, whether the weather is hot or warm. If you are in hot weather, you wear appropriate boots and liners to keep your feet as cool as possible. You can use antipersperant to actually inhibit sweating, helping keep your feet dry. No kidding. In cold weather, same thing.
__________________
"It's better to die on your feet than live on your knees."
"Its not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me" -Batman
"There are no obstacles, only opportunities for excellence."- NousDefionsDoc
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