Similiar to how current Special Forces are, such as rapid/surprise assault and elite soldiers

I am going into my 3rd year of my undergraduate history degree (UK University) and therefore I will be promptly starting my dissertation. My proposed thesis (although not final since I am yet to come up with a suitable title) will be a micro-historical study of the effects that the “British Winter of Discontent” (1978-79) had on the Gwynedd and the Anglesey Area. I have been fortuitous, since a lot of the people who lived that period of time in the local area are still alive today. As a result their opinions and experiences will indefinitely aid me in assessing the mentalities of the time. Whilst Newspapers and other forms of primary documents will be my closest friends during my research, I was wondering if academics and historians, on this reddit page, had much of an opinion on the developments in “Oral History” as an effective form of Historical evidence. In slightly touching upon the subject as one of the modules last year, I was always put off by the Taylor quote that it was just simply: “Old men drooling about their youth” – Therefore I have a few questions:

• Can Oral History be relied on as effective evidence?
• Are memories to be trusted?
• Would Oral History, in regards to my topic, be necessary in order to conduct my research?

Thank You, in advance, for the replies!

TL; DR – How useful is Oral History?

Do we know how long Imperial Chinese martial training took? What sorts of exercises or drills would be practiced?

I purposely left it broad because I'm very interested in many aspects including but not limited to, military, economic, social, and political.

The answer I'm looking for is really more a matter of clarification. Thanks for helping out!

If the Byzantine-Sassanid war weekend both of the two empires and was a contributing factor into the fall of the Sassanid Empire what saved the Byzantines from complete destruction at the hand of the Arabs

I promise that I'm not trying to troll or anything. Were signs made by the businesses they hung in front of? Or was it something that was organised on a higher level? How good of a business was it? Did it impact the national economy during the time?

I've recently been watching the excellent documentary WWII in Colour and I watched the episode on North Africa. Operation torch was glossed over and I really want to know more about it. I know about the Anglo-American forces striking west to attack the germans from behind at Tunis, but was this really worth it? Would it be easier if the Allies used the resources in torch on the main assault from east to west?

The moment they were freed, How much did they know about the outside world?

Were there any preconceptions? False notions? Amazing facts that they had to be informed of?

Did they realise what they had gone through (the scale that it was being done?) etc

Thank you for your responses

As John Green explains in Crash Course World History, the First Crusade can be called a pilgrimage with a touch of warfare, can this be backed up?

i have heard that they were black, they were asian, or that they were multiethnic. in your opinion, what do you think the ancient egyptians were?

With the mostly unsuccessful exceptions of the M551 Sheridan, AMX-13 Harpoon, and M60A2 Starship, most Western tanks did not use missiles. However, many Soviet tanks, from the T-55 to the T-80, used ATGM missiles that could in theory kill NATO tanks at a distance where they couldn't respond. Why would Western armies not emulate this concept?

Did the current bishop have the right to name a successor or would the Pope make the appointment when the current bishop died?

If the latter, what were the real politics of this? Would the Pope face significant pressure from nearby lay lords to appoint their younger sons to these roles?

I was watching Yojimbo and Sanjuro recently, and I was just curious as to exactly how much money is being talked about when they're discussing how much to pay someone for their services. Wikipedia didn't really give a good frame of reference for exactly how much 1 ryo could buy.

I'm curious as to what kinds of names people had far back in the very beginnings of recorded history. Is there anything that might suggest the kinds of names people had in the earliest days of civilization?

It is a much older religion so why do much fewer people follow it?

Everyone knows Alexander was a good commander. But was he truly a good warrior? If so what sort of fighting style would he have used (if there was one)

Or of Domitian's reconstruction work done during his reign?

On a related note, if little of Agrippa's original structure remains, why did Hadrian (or Trajan, if he initiated the project) choose to keep the original dedication rather than putting his own name on the monument?

Presumably, people have come across fossil-bearing layers -- without knowing where they came from, of course -- and found particularly pretty rocks. Are there any records of that? Furthermore, are there any recorded theories on what those rocks were? What sort of theories might they have had to explain plant- and animal-looking rocks?

I'm kind of fascinated by history of science outside of Modern Science. Before it was all formalised, people still found weird stuff, wondered about it, and tried to explain it. Are there any fossils featured in mythologies?