This is a pretty random, although kind of fun, question.
In a book I'm reading, '1948' by Benny Morris, about the war between Israel and Egypt, Jordan, etc. I came across a puzzling sentence: '"But most of the Egyptians fled into the desert. The many shoes scattered by the roadsides testified to crumbling Egyptian companies and platoons that had turned into human dust," wrote one Eighth Brigade chronicler.'
The citation for this quote comes from a war photographer, Avraham Vered from a book 'Fighters for the Freedom of Israel'. The endnote in '1948' adds that: "The sight of endless abandoned shoes in the sands of Sinai was to characterize the Israeli victories in the selfsame battlefields in 1956 and 1967.
In short, I'm trying to figure out whats going on here. Why would fleeing soldiers leave their shoes behind? Is there something about desert warfare in the 1940s that would make this reasonable or necessary? Is it possibly a cultural signaling of surrender? Were they afraid to be recognised as deserters?
The reason for this is likely not cultural. It's possible that this was related, to some extent, to not wanting to be mistaken for a soldier, thought that too strikes me as unlikely. Simply put, many were abandoning posts and did not have vehicles to do so, or the vehicles had been destroyed (depending on the war). Traversing the desert on foot and in boots was difficult, especially given the dunes in the Sinai. That's one of the main reasons I've managed to find; folks throwing away their helmets and weapons and without vehicles would throw away boots (maybe they had alternative shoes, however) to try and make a run for it in lighter shoes. Or, as mentioned, they did not want to be mistaken for a soldier, and boots might have been a giveaway.
It's hard to fully trace this home, but I definitely don't believe this has something to do with cultural signals or recognition as deserters, so much as expediency when traversing dunes and possibility of being recognized as a soldier. However, since some may have still worn uniforms, the latter (and the point about being a deserter) seems less likely as well, than the simple need to move quicker on foot.