Three times, wartime circumstances contrived to redeploy George Wilkinson out of the fighting in the Second World War.

And in all three cases the veteran soldier and retired lieutenant-colonel remembers his replacement was either captured or wounded. The first replacement was injured in the botched Dieppe raid, the second captured in Sicily, and the third was captured on a reconnaissance mission in Europe.

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“That was three times I got replaced and three times the guys who replaced me got nailed,” said Wilkinson, now 96 and living in Saanich. “It’s like that sometimes, you never know.”

Meanwhile, he landed in Normandy in July 1944, weeks after D-Day. He moved on with Canadian tankers through northern France, Holland and into Germany. Finally, he was sent home and arrived in B.C. on VE Day.

Wilkinson married his teenage sweetheart, Isobel, weeks after getting back. (Isobel died in 2010 at the age of 90 and the couple have two grown children.) He escaped being sent to fight the Japanese because the Americans dropped the atomic bombs on Aug. 6 and 9, 1945.

But the end of the war marked the 10th year Wilkinson had been in the army. He had enlisted in 1935 at 17 because the army soccer team wanted him on the field. He had done nothing but soldiering all his adult life, most of it with the Canadian Provost Corps — the military police — so after the war he decided to continue with the army.

“I had never had a civilian job and I was married and thinking, ‘What the hell am I going to do?’” he said.

It was a military career that began in Victoria as a private in the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry and ended as a lieutenant-colonel in the provost corps, with peacekeeping tours in Cyprus and the Middle East.

After his army career ended in 1967, he took a job with the federal Department of External Affairs doing intelligence work until he finally retired in 1976.

Wilkinson’s remarkable and, he admits, often lucky, career will be honoured tonight at the Ashton Garrison Museum where he has donated many of his wartime artifacts and memorabilia.

He is also assisting the Naval and Military Museum at CFB Esquimalt with a display on the military police for next year to honour the 75th anniversary of the Canadian Provost.

And he will be flying to Normandy in June to view the 70th anniversary ceremonies marking the D-Day invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe.

Wilkinson joined the provost in 1941. Like many of his wartime experiences, it was the result of happenstance. While still in the PPCLI, he had been injured in a grenade accident in England and was hospitalized for several weeks. Following the hospital stay, he was sent to a holding unit to be redeployed to another unit.

In the holding unit, he volunteered for the paratroopers, the RCAF and anything else that would get him away from the mercy of the holding unit.

Then along came a senior officer from the provost corps looking for volunteers. Until then Canadian military policing was done by the RCMP, but they were needed in Canada. So replacements had to be found.

As an enlisted man, Wilkinson said he had little use for military police. He had even been busted down to private from corporal after a drunken incident.

But the visiting provost officer said after the war, former Provost would likely be guaranteed spots with the Mounties. Since the lack of jobs during the Depression had convinced Wilkinson to join the army in the first place, a job with the RCMP was a good inducement.

Wilkinson is also quick to point out that, as a member of the divisional provost, his wartime duties went far beyond dealing with drunken soldiers.

The provost corps moved at the head of the advancing army, sometimes even in front, keeping roads clear for tanks and soldiers.

“Getting troops through to the front can be very difficult,” said Wilkinson. “They need guides, they need reconnaissance and they need traffic control.”

“Back then all the roads in Normandy were solid traffic and the roads were directed by provost,” he said.

It was also dangerous work. The retreating Germans knew the range and location of every crossroad, spots where traffic was sure to bunch up and where provost were stationed to provide control.

So every traffic-control point also had a slit trench to provide shelter from artillery shells fired by the Germans.

“Provost don’t do so much actual fighting but they did a lot of dodging,” said Wilkinson. “We lost a lot of guys that way.”

When he returns to Normandy in June, his third trip back since the war, he will be expecting a lot of sadness.

“It kind of hits you when you look at all these cemeteries and particularly when you find names of guys you knew,” said Wilkinson.

“The last time I was there I walked around and the first row I found three guys who were my buddies or names I knew,” he said.

“One of them, I didn’t know him from a hole in the ground but I inherited his sleeping bag after he was killed,” said Wilkinson. “I carried it all through Europe,” said Wilkinson.

“It was about the fourth grave I saw and it was almost like he was there saying, ‘You SOB, you stole my sleeping bag.’”

rwatts@timescolonist.com