Symptoms of a Dying Battery (-ies) ?

[Diesel Thunder]

Well, here's the story:

Today after work I get in to start the truck and it fires up a little slowly and has a very rough shaky idle. Some blue and white smoke belched out of the exhaust for 5-7 seconds--then cleared, but the rough idle remained. It was 48 degrees outside and the truck sat for 10 hours. The grid heaters are doing their normal cycling during the rough running.

So, I turned on the manual high idle and the truck RPM bumps right up to 1100 and runs perfect. So I increased the idle up to 1500 and still smooth.

Turned off high idle and truck idled rough. High Idle on = runs smooth.

Now after the grids shut off and the alternator started charging...idle smoothed out slightly and got progressively better over the next five minutes. It drove fine on the way home.

Fuel Pressure...checked and fine
Volt Guage...charged above 14V the whole way home (12 miles interstate)
Fuel Filters...factory and 2 micron changed 1000 miles ago
Power Service fuel additive...check

Could this be due to the factory batteries dying on me? Was the load from the grids too much on the cold batteries for the injectors to all fire correctly?

Only had 1 puff of smoke one time prior...bought truck new, no engine mods/programmers ever. Intake/Exhaust only.

Thoughts?

Thanks in advance