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Ben Franklin's World is a production of Clio Digital Media.

And support for this episode comes from the Massachusetts Historical Society.

The first historical society founded in the United States in 1791.

Hello and welcome to Ben Franklin's World Revisited,

a series of classic episodes that bring fresh perspective to our latest episodes and had deeper connections to our understanding of early American history.

And I'm your host, Liz Covart.

Next week, we're going to investigate the everyday experiences of soldiers who fought in the war for American independence, so soldiers

who served in the British Army, Continental Army, and in militia units. And our investigation in

episode 442 will include what they ate, how they trained, what they endured, and what kept

them in the field. But before we actually embark on that investigation, I thought it was worth

exploring the question of what it actually took to keep an 18th century army alive. Now, many of us

carry a particular kind of image when it comes to Valley Forge. Ragged soldiers

huddled together in snow-covered huts with little heat. Hungry men gnawing on whatever they could find,

including old shoe leather. These are powerful images, but are the accurate images?

In episode 348, we met with Ricardo Herrera, a military historian who is now a contributor to the George

Washington Leadership Institute. He's also the author of Feeding Washington's Army, surviving the

Valley Forge winter of 1778. Now, during our conversation, Rick reveals why Valley Forge was not

just a place of frozen suffering, but a hub of military operations as a modern

forward operating base. How the catastrophic failures of the Continental Army supply systems

forced Washington to send armed foraging columns into the Pennsylvania countryside, seizing food,

horses, and equipment from the very civilians the Army was supposed to be protecting.

...