There are actually a variety of schools of thought regarding history's "objectivity" or "subjectivity." I don't have my theory books in front of me, but the "objective" or scientific school of thought is mostly German in origin, while the majority of what were called "post-modern" historians (read from about 1992 or so on) consider history to be subjective in the extreme. Oddly, many of these same people also claim to have the "one true" story in their clutches.

I subscribe to a more balanced theory in that parts of history can be objective, while other parts are certainly subjective and can be examined from a number of perspectives. This calls for a blending of techniques and theories, such as merging oral history with a review of existing records to serve as a basic accuracy check. This means taking the "official history" and combining it with 120mm's recollections and those of others to come up with a more complete picture. Note that I do not say "true" picture, because I don't think that is possible for anyone to accomplish.

All of this has a great deal to do with small wars in that most of them involve a variety of perceptions and often have a great deal of historical background. You need to understand the basics of history so that you can evaluate the information you're given as background. But I may now be straying into Marc's magical relativism plane....