Quote Originally Posted by thescot View Post
Yeah, they're leggings, although some would call them gaiters or puttees. Puttees are actually wound around the lower leg, I believe.

Now you know why they were used: they work great. Even Boy Scouts wore them in the old days (before my time) for the same reason. Tromping about in the woods require something like that for best effect.

BTW, they really do look pretty smart.
British and Canadian puttees were/are specially made strips of material that were/are wound around the legs in an ascending spiral fashion. They used to be commmon surplus items here, probably because no one could come up with another use for them so they stayed on the shelves and in warehouses. The US items shown may have been called puttees in the US but if so I don't think they would have been considered those anywhere elso