One of every 10 soldiers wounded in the Civil War was wounded by artillery fire. But Gary Miller says the much larger threat to soldiers was something much smaller.

Bedbugs.

The bugs were torture to wartime soldiers. So were fleas and flies, all smaller and deadlier than any bullet, as Gary says.

"We had 110,000 die in battle-related injuries, 200,000 died of disease."

Gary blames insects for spreading much of the disease. And he should know. He gained his Civil War expertise as an entomologist. When reading those history books, he kept noticing bugs.

On Friday, July 10, 1863, one soldier wrote this to his wife: “The flies are in the millions, they are never off the table, dead and dying in every mouthful you eat."

It's not the stuff of Civil War reenactments, or even real photographs. Gary says he's only found one picture that even hints at the problems of insects. Yet, he says, they probably did more human harm than either North or South.