Splits, kilts, understudies and the Hindu Kush

Air Marshal Stoush sheds his responsibilities for joint operations so he can better understudy the CDF and perhaps others.

 

As I forecast under a single handful of columns ago when the VCDF first became CJOPS as well, they have had to split the job in half so he is just Vice Chief again.

Barney (my boss, Air Marshal Barney Stoush, the VCDF) has adapted with aplomb as he does to all the many ups and downs of life, bureaucratic death and organisational resurrection at Russell Offices.

I have mixed feelings about the change. My workload has dropped markedly but at the price of the variety narrowing considerably too.

Now a much greater portion of the interminable meetings I have to sit through with him are much less interesting, even allowing for the rarified atmosphere and intrigues of the fifth floor.

Barney, being a fighter pilot and a natural leader of men (and women), soon noticed my change of mood. He subtly floated whether a posting for me might now be in order. ‘After all’, he remarked a bit too comfortably, ‘I can’t monopolise your many talents up here with me forever’.

As he spoke a shiver ran up my spine as I imagined having to move into R2, or even worse, somewhere in Fyshwick, Fern Hill or Bungendore.

Then thoughts of a regimental job struck home and I happily daydreamed momentarily about serving with diggers full-time again. ‘Go home and think about it’, the VCDF commanded, ‘and let me know by the end of the week’.

It was no go domestically as I suspected.

Now the eldest has his name down for Grammar and the youngest has started at Telopea Park, Pandora was not keen to leave the nation’s capital just yet.

Not that she is a Kingston foreshores yuppie by any means, but eight moves since we married 12 years ago have had some inertial effect. She doesn’t mind me deploying operationally somewhere of course, so this gave me the best professional escape route.

I waited for my moment. It came when Barney was distracted trying to decipher Defgram 493/2007, the Enterprise Application Roadmap promulgated by the Directorate of Application Design (whoever they are, whatever they do and whatever an application taxonomy category might be).

Ever so carefully I raised the subject that the latest reorganisation of the VCDF’s responsibilities probably meant continuity in his staff support structures was even more important than usual. ‘Perhaps next year, boss’, I ventured, ‘you could release me to go back to the sharp end’.

Barney chewed on this option for a while, but now he thinks it was his idea he has embraced it wholeheartedly. ‘There’s no great hurry, I suppose’, he mused later, ‘you young fellows are going to be needed up in the Hindu Kush for a long time yet’.

Having hived off his responsibilities as the Chief of Joint Operations, the VCDF can now concentrate on his strategic-level responsibilities understudying the CDF and relieving him of some high-level and time-consuming duties.

Being a helpful team-player at heart in the (again) new ADHQ, Barney also offered to understudy his fellow occupant of the power suite. His kind gesture to the Deputy Secretary, Strategy, Co-ordination and Governance was based on the ever-lengthening, and dissonantly diverse, functional responsibilities listed in the latter’s title. The offer was politely declined, no doubt because of the interesting precedent it might set, but also because some sensitivity still lingers about this role.

Fifth-floor rumour has it that when the need to split the VCDF and CJOPS positions became obvious, and various options were being considered, the Minister himself had wondered aloud at one meeting whether DEPSEC SC&G might not provide a suitable compensator for the extra military three-star needed.

Stunned silence followed by prolonged gurgling noises had greeted the idea. The eruptions apparently stemmed from vigorously suppressed mirth on the part of the uniformed members within earshot and bubbling-up horror on the part of the senior public servants present. There was even considerable surprise among the ministerial staffers – not least because one of them had suggested the idea the week before half in jest.

Luckily the bells rang. The Minister was called away for a division before the idea could take firmer root or anyone suffer injury from choking.

An important strategic-level priority is national protocol.

As an aside, Barney had been most impressed by the CDF’s new ceremonial kilt and wondered whether he should get one too.

I gently broached the subject that unlike the Chief’s moniker, Stoush did not sound particularly Scottish. Being orphaned quite young, the VCDF is unaware of his family’s earliest origins in Australia.

As a proud Furphy from County Armagh, via Shepparton, I suggested that his family name perhaps denoted an origin on the other side of the Irish Sea, as with the likes of Hooligan, Skiddy or O’Brawl.

But Barney was not to be put off lightly and dispatched me to the library to see if there was a Stoush clan tartan. Being a younger generation than the VCDF, a quick web search served even better to dash his hopes in detail.

But Barney brightened noticeably at my compromise suggestion of the RAAF tartan, in its very fetching dark blues, instead.

The CDF is apparently now quite put out as he has discovered his kilt is the Army tartan. Such are the delicate problems of protocol, kilts and splits.