I was riding in the backseat of a Humvee in the first Gulf War. We had launched across the berm into western Iraq and drove steadily for 27 hours in a sandstorm, sandwiched between two columns of M1A1 Abrams tanks of the 24th Mechanized Division. As we rolled into the first laager point, another Humvee pulled up and the driver asked if there was a Mr. Galloway in ours. The admin weenie captain at the wheel said, "Yes, he's here." The driver replied, "Well, General Scott would like to see him." The captain looked over his shoulder and sneered: "This is going to be the shortest meeting in history; General Scott don't talk to no media pukes."
Three hours later then-Major General James Terry Scott and I still were sitting in his trailer talking. First half hour on the current operation; the rest of it on Vietnam.
I asked General Scott a reporter question: "What did Vietnam mean to you?" His response: "It means everything to me. It is one of the two defining moments in my life. It is the filter through which I see events, the screen through which I judge people. Isn't it the same for you?"
I nodded yes, and then asked the other reporter question: "What was the other defining moment in your life?"
The general looked startled, paused for awhile, and then he said these words: "Raising my oldest daughter, who is a Down's Syndrome child. You know, I am a professional military man, and what we are all about is at least the pursuit of perfection. But raising that child taught me there are more ways than one to judge perfection."
As I sat there in that trailer, I thought how well we as a nation are served by those in uniform-especially by such as James Terry Scott, who had the kind of eyes that could see the perfection in the heart of a child.
Editor's Note: James T. Scott retired from the U.S. Army as lieutenant general, served three years as director of national security studies at the JFK School at Harvard University, and now lives on a West Texas ranch that has been in his wife's family for 125 years.
Mr. Galloway is a combat journalist who authored We Were Soldiers Once…And Young (Random House, 1992) with Lieutenant General Harold Moore, U.S. Army (Retired).