Carlton Grey and the Confusing Life in the Army

All these recent fights remind me of the time when I was still a soldier. It was similarly hectic and confusing, although it was also much less interesting. There were no squidmen, or huge animal-things involved, we usually just had to go someplace and shoot French people.  
Also there was a lot more shouting, not from the French, but our own officers. I think they thought that if they shout hard enough at us, then we won’t run away when the enemy starts shooting. It sort of worked, because we didn’t, but I think we would not have run anyway, and so they could have spared themselves a lot of hassle by talking less loud.

I joined the army, because it seemed to be exciting and adventurous, but it was not. You can’t just go and fight with people for some reason, there are all these silly rules you must learn first. Like how to march, and salute and wear your uniform, and not to ask questions and so on. If you do anything that they don’t like you get shouted at, or punished but since you are already being shouted at and punished it is not a huge difference. We were lucky, that the French seemed to do the whole thing the same way, otherwise we would have been conquered while still at the “being shouted at” stage.

Anyway, when we finally went to fight the enemy it was also disappointing. There were long sails and marches, and a lot of camping in faraway places. Most of them seemed interesting enough, but of course you could not just go around exploring because of the enemy, so you had to sit around the camp all day doing nothing. 

After that, there were the battles, and they were quite scary and chaotic. You had to shoot the enemy, who was also shooting at you, but you can’t really tell people apart most of the time, so not much was being accomplished there.  After fighting some battles the war ended for some reason I was not paying attention too, and we could go home. I quit the army as soon as possible after that. It turned out to be one of my best decisions, I could not have had the easy and fun life of an iron trading monkey-hunter pirate otherwise.