Sometimes, if someone hasn't shown up for their military service, they send the military police around to get them back to their duties. Perhaps he was looking for someone for that reason?

Someone in my husband's division sloped off a few days early to escape the clean-up one year and the military police had to go and find him and escort him back to face the music.

I think, after they had finished with him, he wished he had just stuck it out for the last week and a half...