You're listening to an airwave media podcast.

Ben Franklin's world is a production of the

Omaha Institute and is sponsored by the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. Hello and welcome to episode 348 of Ben Franklin's world.

The podcast dedicated to helping you

learn more about how the people and events

of our early American past have shaped the present day world

we live in.

And I'm your host, Liz Kovart.

On December 19, 1777, George Washington marched his continental army into its winter encampment at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.

Now if you think back to what we learned in school, Valley Forge is the winter when the

soldiers in the Continental Army did everything they could just to keep warm.

They built wooden huts where they huddled inside around did everything they could just to keep warm.

They built wooden huts where they huddled inside around a campfire.

They wrapped cloth around their feet and their hands because they lacked socks and gloves.

And if they had shoes, and some of them didn't have shoes were taught, they were chewing on their

shoe leather because they often had little to no food.

Valley Forge we were taught was a winter of great probation. But we were also taught that it was a winter of great

virtue because despite all of the freezing conditions and lack of food and supplies the

Army stayed and readied themselves for their continued fight for independence in the spring of 1778.

But is this what really happened at Valley Forge?

Did the men of the Continental Army really experience such privation that they were eating their own shoe

leather.

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