Boots (poem)


"Boots" is a poem by English author and poet Rudyard Kipling. It was first published in 1903, in his collection The Five Nations.
"Boots" imagines the repetitive thoughts of a British Army infantryman marching in South Africa during the Second Boer War. During the Advance on Pretoria in 1900, in which British troops marched more than 300 miles from Bloemfontein to Pretoria over the course of a month, averaging 11 miles a day, it was reported that many troops felt fatigued and extremely exhausted. During the latter half of the war, the Boers had resorted to guerilla warfare, the British would often go on long marches in an attempt to pursue them, often with no success, leading to further exhaustion. It has been suggested for the first four words of each line to be read slowly, at a rate of two words per second, to match with the cadence, or rhythm of a foot soldier marching.

Versions

The 1915 spoken-word recording of the poem by American actor Taylor Holmes has been used for its psychological effect in U.S. military Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape schools.
The poem was set to music for low male voice and orchestra by "P. J. McCall", and recorded in 1929 by Australian bass-baritone Peter Dawson. McCall was Dawson, publishing under a pseudonym. That setting was soon recorded by other singers, but seems largely to have fallen out of fashion, possibly because of World War II.
American-born British poet T. S. Eliot included the poem in his 1941 collection A Choice of Kipling's Verse.
A Russian version of the poem, Pyl', was set to music by Soviet bard Evgeny Agranovich during the Second World War, and used as a marching song in his unit. The unit's commissar enjoyed the song, but disapproved of the foreign lyrics. Because of this, Agranovich later added several verses of his own invention to the march.

In popular culture

Holmes' recitation was used in the cinematic trailer for the Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Zombies map "Terminus". The same recording was used in the 2023 horror film Horror in the High Desert 2: Minerva, as well as on the track Boots by Young Fathers, as part of their soundtrack for the 2025 horror film 28 Years Later, as well as its acclaimed trailer.
On 5 January 2026, the official Valorant TikTok account posted a stitched of several cinematics animated by Fortiche with an arrangement of Holmes' recitation as the main audio.

Notable recordings