Yet, Oral Historys can be of great value when used properly.

For example my Grandfather would tell the story that his father as a confederate soldier, saying he "left many a Bloody footprint in the snow". This made no sence to me. I thought that all Confederate soldiers were supposed to have been barefoot. So, why did this stick in the veterans mind as being unusual?

Then, I found the service records of my G-grandfather William Laminack of Co "F" Palmetto South Carolina Sharpshooters, Jenkins Brigade, Longstreet's Corp. A unit that I had never heard of at that time. I then read the accounts of the winter that Longstreets Corp spent at Strawberry Plains, Tennessee. And of the two weeks in January '64 there, where the mud of the roads froze so hard that the edge of the wagon ruts would cut the feet of the men and animals so badly, when they slipped and fell, that they left the roads red with their blood from the cuts.

Now, I wonder, "what kind of men were these?"