Army puttee
Category
Textiles
Date
Unknown
Materials
Wool
Measurements
120 x 100 mm
Order this imageCollection
Mr Straw's House, Nottinghamshire
NT 745442
Caption
The puttee was first adopted as part of the service uniform of foot and mounted soldiers in British India. The British Indian Army found this garment to be both comfortable and inexpensive. The puttee was subsequently widely adopted by a number of armies during World War I. In its original form the puttee comprised long strips of cloth worn as a tribal legging in the Himalayas. Infantry puttees were wound up from ankle to knee, but in cavalry regiments they were wound down from knee to ankle. Fox Brothers supplied over 8,000 miles of cloth to the British and Allied governments during World War I. 852 miles of cloth formed the largest single order for textiles placed during the war to the Ministry of Defence to make ‘puttees’. They used 10,000 tons or 900 trucks of wool to complete this order.
Summary
Two green wool puttees, First World War issue.