Personnel Management Mysteries Uncovered
From The Sky Suspended A Fighter Pilot's Story by Jim Bailey:
Whilst the author was working in a unit to "simplify or eradicate bumph", he looked into postings...
"Also, we inquired why postings of staff should occur pointlessly, to discover eventually that the Records Office, Gloucester, was run by Air Commodore Cordingley, who refused to allow us into his department to investigate it. We thus discovered that when Major Trenchard had formed the RFC, Sgt-Maj Cordingley had been in charge of his orderly room. As the RFC grew in size, later to become the RAF, Cordingley advanced in rank, so that in the early months of 1945, no-one else save Cordingley had ever been in charge of Air Force postings - and there the matter stood. And little did we know then, a fact which came to light later, that a group of his frustrated clerks were playing 'happy family' with the RAF, shifting people about the world in an edeavour to achieve, with the aid of their minutely detailed reference books, one unit composed entirely of people with scars on the left thigh and another unit composed entirely of people with hare-lips."
Folk lore perhaps... It couldn't happen today...