Once your boots are clean and dry leave them in a warmish room - not an airing cupboard - for a day or so and allow the leather to get to room temperature.
Then open your tin of brown Leder Gris, and pour a small amount of Neats Foot Oil (any saddlery or agricultural suppliers will have it) into the lid.
Dap your cloth into the oil, then into the Leder Gris, and rub it in.
Apply to your boots. The oil softens the wax - as well as being fantastic for leather in itself - allowing it to go much deeper into the leather rather than sitting on the surface.
Leave it for 24 hours, then give it a quick brush with a soft brush. Your boots won’t be shiny, but they will be soft, waterproof, and smell of a tack shop…
I use either Kiwi brown; or plain, old, el-cheapo, brown polish from the local pound shop (it might be “punch” or something); depending on which pouch I pick up.
Both are fine.
The MOD did push Dark Tan from the beginning and as other’s have said, it gives the boots a very noticeable purplish tint.
I just user quecha leather grease from decathlon, was about 2 quid, on brown boots to nourish the leather and maintain waterproofing and repellency, only use leder gris if there is a scuff that needs sorting, as it’s relatively expensive makes a tin last a long time
For those specific boots I would just use regular kiwi polish. You can usually get Mod brown else “mid tan” would work. It doesn’t really matter as they aren’t great boots. For proper brown boots like altbergs, then you start using the proper stuff.
It is ok in a pinch but it it isn’t best suited to the leather of the Altbergs.
Towards the end of the run there was definitely a big dud batch.
My first pair of assault boots lasted for years and years. Later pairs, including almost every pair we issued from a large batch we were given, all exhibited the same “oooh these are bouncy!” trend followed by a 20 minute end of life molting session.
It took me ages to clean the rubber marks off the lino.
I remember, as a cadet, having a pair of really really comfortable assault boots. Unfortunately, Salisbury Plain destroyed those and no pair after that was quite the same. They were just made be the cheapest bidder. I have no clue why anyone would revere them as having any kind of quality. Boot “technology” has moved on and we should embrace it.