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 grad… - Robert Lee Scott Jr.

Colonel Richardson had everything safely under control long before I caught up with him, drenched to the waist after splashing through the creek. He sat in the saddle, speaking soothingly to the panting animal and rubbing its quivering neck. I stood there at attention, feeling more in a state of shock than the horse. At least, the thought came to me, that the Com had not hit me with his riding crop. Finally, having attended to what every cavalryman considers his first duty, he turned his attention to me.
"Don't you know, Mr. Scott," he said calmly, "that the bridle paths are off limits to you, much less motorcycles?"
Only then did he dismount and slowly lead the quieted horse back across the stream and uphill to the path where my motorcycle lay. I tried to explain my fascination with the journeys of Marco Polo, my training for an attempt to retrace his route on a motorcycle. I even discussed with him that puzzled me. In all his journeys Marco Polo had never mentioned the Great Wall of China.
The Com listened intently as we walked our mounts down the bridle path. He asked about logistics. Could I make such a journey? Had I considered every angle? I kept waiting for him to revert to being the commandant, to quote some regulation prohibiting my summer plans, but such an announcement never came. When we reached the crossroads near the Cadet Chapel, he remounted to return to the stables. Before he turned away told me to come see him at some convenient time the following week, saying that he had served as military attache in Rome before his present duty assignment. Perhaps he might be able to tell me something to help me on my monumental journey. "Good luck, Mr. Scott," he concluded. "You represent something of an enigma yourself."

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.

I was flying with 1,000-pound bombs attached to my P-51. We were escorting B-29s sent to bomb steel mills in Korea. On the return I flew over Peking and over the Great Wall. I was fascinated with it and followed it all the way to the Yangtze River. My plane made a shadow over the wall and I said out loud, ‘O God, let me one day walk were my shadow walks.’