One Sunday, I was carrying out my training in a reveries, my imagination running wild as I gunned my machine into a tight turn, dipping low to compen… - Robert Lee Scott Jr.

For now, the seriousness of war had gradually come to me. Unless men like myself-thousands and millions of them-left these wonderful luxuries in this great land of America we could lose it all forever. I loved these two with all my heart, but the only way in all the world to keep them living in the clean world they were accustomed to was to steel myself to the pain of parting with them for months or years-or even forever. The actuality of war, grim war, had come. I knew then that the theoretical word “Democracy” was not what we were to fight for. I knew it was for no party, no race, creed, or color. We were going to fight, and many of us were to die, for just what I had here- my wife and family. To me, they were all that was real, they were all that I could understand. To me, they were America.

Anyway, my adventures had run out by 1982 when I made the worst mistake of my life by shutting myself away to work night and day on this book. I gradually became worse than bored until, as the year came to a close, I knew something was very wrong with me. I could not sleep and the thought of food- even breakfast, my favorite meal of the day- made me ill. As a teen-age Merchant Marine sailor I had never been seasick even in North Atlantic storms. As a flight instructor, I had never known airsuckness in all my years of teaching acrobatics. Now my force-feedings left me nauseated.
I no longer bounced out of bed, awakening to sunrises full of plans, expectations, and promises. A fog had rolled in and with it came fear, cold and stark. I have always worked to remain in good physical condition and all medical tests failed to find any problem. Then they sent me to the last department, Psychiatry.
I had reactive depression. As a psychiatrist explained it, I had lived a full and productive life only to become a recluse in my self-made prison. I learned then that depression is a disease; for me, accustomed as I was to boundless good health, it was the worst sickness I have ever known. In these more enlightened times, help is finally available in some measure for the millions who suffer from depression. Just recognizing it as a disease that can be treated has been a major step.

There is an archaic regulation at West Point that says a cadet shall not own a horse, a dog, or a moustache. Had the Powers That Be even suspected that I had a motorcycle that spring of 1932, it, too, would undoubtedly have been outlawed by the book of regulations. I had rented it from a shop in Highland Farms, a red Indian Scout that I had practically lived on it during the weekends from the time ice left the Hudson River.
Four years of schooling in tactics and logistics had impressed upon me that no individual, much less an army, can do anything near perfect the first try. Success demands practice, doing things over and over again- what the military calls "dry runs." Thus, as the day drew closer for me to follow in the footsteps of the Venetian, I prepared by becoming completely at home on the vehicle I had chosen for my journey. The Indian was for training; I would buy another motorcycle for the trip when I got to France.