War Department

The U.S. War Department, the federal executive department responsible for the nation's military forces during World War II, appears in Pet Sematary as a remote but consequential bureaucratic entity. Its procedures for managing the dead and its record-keeping systems become entangled with the supernatural horror that overtakes the town of Ludlow, Maine, when a father attempts to reverse his son's death. The department's involvement is triggered by the return of a soldier who was officially killed in action, forcing local authorities to confront a reality that defies all military and rational explanation.

The Mystery Train and the Return of Timmy Baterman

The War Department's role begins with the logistics of wartime death. In July 1943, the body of Timmy Baterman, a seventeen-year-old soldier from Ludlow who had been killed in Italy, was shipped home aboard what a Graves and Registration officer called a "mystery train." The officer, described as drunk and carrying a list of coffins to be dropped at towns including Houlton, Passadumkeag, Bangor, Derry, and Ludlow, told the engineer, Huey Garber, that he felt "like a fugging milkman." Timmy's body was buried with full military honors in Pleasantview Cemetery. Days later, however, residents began seeing Timmy walking the roads, pale and lurching, dressed in civilian clothes. The postmaster, George Anderson, reported that his mailwoman, Marjorie Washburn, had seen Timmy and was so frightened she abandoned her route. The town's selectman, Hannibal Benson, received a call from the War Department.

The War Department Investigates

The War Department's interest was not supernatural but bureaucratic. A Lieutenant Kinsman, whose job was to "sort out malicious mischief from plain old tomfoolery," had received multiple anonymous letters from different Ludlow residents, all claiming that Timmy Baterman was alive. Kinsman told Hannibal Benson that if the letters had come from a single person, he would have suspected a psychopath with a grudge against the Baterman family. But the different handwriting indicated a genuine local belief. Kinsman threatened to send an investigator to determine whether Timmy was dead, AWOL, or if the army had buried the wrong man under Timmy's name. The War Department's concern was purely administrative: it "didn't like to think their records were all at sixes and sevens." This threat of an official inquiry forced the town's leaders—Jud Crandall, George Anderson, Hannibal Benson, and fire chief Alan Purinton—to confront Bill Baterman directly.

The Confrontation and Its Aftermath

When the four men visited Bill Baterman's home, they found Timmy standing in the yard, his face lit by the setting sun. Bill insisted he had done nothing wrong, declaring, "They had no right to take my boy. He was only seventeen. He was all I had left of his dear mother, and it was illfuckinlegal. So fuck the army, and fuck the War Department, and fuck the United States of America." The resurrected Timmy, a malevolent entity, then revealed dark secrets about each of the men, confirming truths they had hidden for years. The confrontation ended with the men fleeing in terror. Days later, Bill Baterman shot Timmy twice in the chest, doused the house with range oil, and set it ablaze, killing himself as well. The county medical examiner later determined that Timmy's body had been dead for two or three weeks. The War Department's investigation was rendered moot by the fire, but its intervention had forced the town to acknowledge the horror that the Micmac burial ground had unleashed.