gunny63 wrote:
I am a member of a Vietnam living history group, and a collector of Vietnam equipment, and ever since seeing the still of Hicks's boot I have suspected something, the Marines do NOT wear Vietnam era boots, this has now been confirmed because on Facebook, Doug produced some pics of his film used boots (pics not used here) and they are actually South Korean repro boots, in the Hicks pic you can see 1, a squarer heel, the genuine boots have a slight curve. 2, a raised area on the insole, genuine are flat, 3, a coarser nylon weave. the other pics I have included here are of a random pair of the South Korean boots that show the differences, it doesn't matter much I guess but this is just for completeness of information
Each actor probably had more than one set of boots and were undoubtedly acquired by raiding all the military surplus shops in the area of Pinewood studios, there likely was a mixture of real and repro boots of various origin used in the production, so it depends which actor and which set of boots they had on in any particular scene.