Highland Mid-Kids Radio Club Highland Heroes Series – Major Christopher Scott – Part 1

“This is Hensley Neil with the Highland Mid-Kids Radio Club and today we are continuing our Highland Heroes series by talking with Mr. Chris Scott. Thank you for joining us. Could you tell us a bit about yourself?”

“Thanks for having me on the station. My name is Major Christopher Scott. I’m right now, active duty Army. My daughter is Juliet Scott, she goes to Highland County Middle School.”

“Originally from New Jersey, so grew up on the Jersey Shore, had a normal childhood went to school down in James Madison University up in Harrisonburg.”

“Hello my name is Aletheia. What brought you to Highland County?”

“Well, I met my wife in college, about 20 years ago now, and over the course of the years we’ve been married, eventually her family found their way to Highland County, so they moved here about 10 years ago. And we love the place – with my job, we move around, not just the country, but I mean, we moved around the world multiple times.”

“And about two – three years ago, middle of COVID pandemic, we were living in Mongolia, and at that time, Mongolia was having a real bad outbreak. They shut the borders down. And I was working at the US Embassy – the embassy actually told us we had to leave, so we had to come back to the US. Came back to the US right in the middle of the pandemic, didn’t have a house, didn’t have any of our stuff, just had a couple of suitcases. So we figured, ‘Well we don’t know how long it’s gonna be,’ so we ended up buying a house. Figured we’d want a place that if we couldn’t go back, that Juliet could go to school somewhere close to family. So we ended up finding a place in downtown Monterey. And right now, I’m kind of in between assignments, I’m just going through schooling, so while I’m doing that, it’s all distance learning, so that allows me to actually spend most of my time here in Highland and the rest of my time up in Washington, DC.”

“Hello, my name is Juliet – yet can you tell us about your job in the military?”

“So originally in the military, I joined up as a combat engineer, which involves mostly de-mining, finding explosives and also blowing things up – so it was a lot of fun. Did that for about 10 years, had a bunch of different jobs, did Iraq, Afghanistan, did a bunch of deployments to Europe, and then went to a unit called the Asymmetric Warfare Group. That was really like, a broadening assignment, looking at tactical things, but putting it in a strategic context – looking at combat on the ground, and then how does that fit into a bigger picture like worldwide?”

“That kind of opened my eyes a little bit to other jobs out there, so after a while, when it came time to decide on a future path in the army, I chose to become a defense attaché, which was something I was exposed to working overseas in Europe, where each embassy we have overseas has a person that is both an adviser to the US ambassador on the military, both the US military and also like that host country’s military, and also they’re someone that the Pentagon looks to, to answer questions about what’s going on in the region and what’s going on with the host nation’s military, enemy military actions in that area.

“So when I was in Mongolia, that was my last assignment was being the Assistant Defense Attaché and the US Army Attaché to Mongolia. Which, I advise the US ambassador on US military activities, different training exercises we conducted with the Mongolians, things with the United Nations Partnership for Peace, different organizations and different missions that we do throughout the world and in that region. And then simultaneously also, the job’s to ask questions – go out, ask questions, figure out ’Okay, what’s going on with the different militaries here, how can we help the Mongolians?’, and then convey that to both the Pentagon, US Army Pacific in Hawaii and the US Ambassador through the State Department.

That’s kind of the job in a nutshell.”

“Hello, my name is Steven. Where have you been stationed around the world?”

“So the first 12 years or so, we were stationed around the US. And then overseas combat deployments, I did a Iraq for a year, Afghanistan for a year. I was in eastern Ukraine about five or six times for several months, was in Germany for rotation, United Kingdom and then came back and after that, I got stationed in Mongolia for three years.”

Stay tuned for part two of the Mid-Kids interview with Major Scott.