Highland Regiments footwear during the Great War

[Ninehostages]

Looking back I can laugh at all the "Basic Training" imaginative practices we endured in the first couple of months after induction. The first billet I was assigned to was called Napier Barracks, it was a open style with 16 beds on each wing with the ablutions in the middle of the building with a "Torpedo tube" crapper with a flusher valve at one end.
It had coal stoves in the middle of each wing and waxed and "bumpered" the floors with a long handled short haired brush and an old piece of blanket for extra shine. The beds were exactly the ones shown in the photo, and they sagged badly if some of the metal clips were absent, so you sometimes had to wire them closed. Bye the way, we called the sheet and blanket thing a :bed block". I had not thought of these things in nearly 50 years. All my yesterdays, thanks for the memories.

... deployed to Crimea, after that?

[kilted redleg]

As a veteran of the US Army, I found the barrack picture quite interesting. To quote Steve Ashton in the military everything is matchy matchy. Why the split of footwear under the bed; the two dress shoes on either side of the boots? I took basic at Fort Knox in Kentucky, beds were bunked two to cubical one soldier's head was north the other south [to stop the spread of germs we were told]. Th Army logo and motto "This We'll Defend" was on the latrine door, but no one had the guts to ask why if attacked we were going to defend the latrine. Our dress shoes were kept in a locker with our other uniforms in a proscribed manner. The latrine as you walked in and turned left was the shower room; walk straight and there was the sinks and toilets all in the same room, no divider. The room was like a green house full of windows. I was in delta platoon and while you were taking care of business you could watch Alpha and Bravo train. I think these were constructed just prior to WW2 this was 1973 they were never torn down.
Thank God the women didn't train at good old Fort Knox!