I had started out without any ambition, only a great wish to see the business finished.

But now I had acquired a professional interest in the thing, I had a nailing good brigade, and I had got the hang of our new kind of war as well as any fellow from Sandhurst and Camberley.

They were asking me to scrap all I had learned and start again in a new job.

I had to agree, for discipline's discipline, but I could have knocked their heads together in my vexation.
What was worse they wouldn't, or couldn't, tell me anything about what they wanted me for.

It was the old game of running me in blinkers.