The Curse of the 4th Iowa Mounted Rifles

Johnson: I'm not sure if writing about this is such a good idea, but it's bothered me ever since I got back from Shiloh last week and I just have to tell someone. I belong to a reenactment group, the 4th Iowa Mounted Rifles. We were down at Shiloh for the annual reenactment of the battle-and I won't get into the historical details since we'll all wind up arguing Civil War stuff in the end. Now, I'd bought the sword, pistol and forage cap of a near legendary son of Iowa, General Nero "The Fireman" Bates, who had commanded the 4th Iowa Mounted Rifles during the Civil War. I was damned proud to own these things and everybody in the unit drewled over 'em-or so I like to think. Anyways, at Shiloh, I met a very interesting young gent named Felix Wilson. He had several brain-motor disabilities which kept him strapped in a wheelchair and weearing a fiberglas helmet at all times. He spoke solely through the use of an electronic device with a keypad which he manipulated with one hand.

     Well, anyways, when I found out how interested he was in the 4th Mounted, I brought out Bates' stuff and let him handle it. I put the blue-black Navy Colt Revolver in his gnarled hands and laid the light cavalry sabre across his lap. And when I clapped the forage cap on his head, something weird happened. He started shaking-violently. Then suddenly he looks at me and yells in a perfectly crisp, clear voice, "Major Humes, take your men and plug the gap along the road and be quick about it!"

     I just looked at him, my mouth hangin' open.

     "Major, why do you not obey my orders?" he yells again, "There are advancing rebel soldiers not fifty yards from our position!?"

     I tell you, I about filled my britches. And before I could say anything else, he got himself loose and stood up in front me on his own two feet.

     "Sergeant! Arrest this man!" he yells. One of our boys stuck his head out of his tent and looked at us. "Sergeant!" he shouted at the kid-he was just a thirteen year old kid. When the kid didn't move, Felix pointed the Navy Colt at my head pulled back the hammer. "Cowardice in the face of the enemy is a crime I suffer from no man!"

     Click.

     Professor Malby had just retired from the History Department of Georg von Podebrad College. He lives in a big-ass museum of a house. His study was a room where people who are into history can argue late into the night. But God, did it reek. There were two worn-out leather chairs with dark sweat stains across their backs, smoke-yellowed walls, and the floor was bivouacked by a division of stacked folders and cracked leather-bound books. I thought I'd stepped into The Fall of The House of Usher.

     Professor Malby slid into the larger of the two chairs and lit his pipe. "I sold the stuff to you," he said before I even spoke, "because they have never given anyone a night's peace. Why do you look so surprised, Mr. Stuart? Didn't you know my illustrious great-grandfather bought this house with the profits of murder?"

     "No," I said, and told him my adventure at Shiloh. I was about to say Felix' name when he interupted me with a shout.

     "Do not mention your friend's name in this house! There are those who still seek Bates! They may hear. I beg you say nothing further! No, hear me out! There are reasons for this which I will explain. Clearly you know nothing of the facts behind the matter; you merely know military history! Bates was a fiend, consumed with the desire for money! When he formed the regiment in January of '62, he did so with an evil scheme in mind. He purposely selected his company command officers because they were of no great shrewdness and they had wealthy and ambitious fathers willing to ingratiate their sons to him with liberal bribes. But this was incidental; he had a bolder plan!

     "The night the regiment left Zoar for Davenport aboard the train, he convinced his captains and his immediate regimental headquarters staff to form a tontine among themselves. That way should the Fortunes of War play roughly with some of their number, the survivors would stand to profit! Now you begin to see! Each officer had to put in fifty dollars to start, plus match any additional amounts posted by then Colonel Bates or forfeit their participation and investment. Bates' agent in Davenport would invest the money until the end of the war. Those left alive would then split the pot.

     "The contract was drawn up on the spot, and all 13 officers signed it.

     "Humes' death at Shiloh happened as just as you enacted with your friend. Bates shot Major Humes when he discovered they were overrun by Rebels. As Humes fell, Bates caught him; several of the regiment witnessed this and that is how the myth of his 'taking the bullet for Bates' got started. I know this for a fact after reading First Sergeant Donald Wilson's letters home as well as others. The facts string themselves together all too readily; my conclusions are irrefutable! Bates was directly responsible for the deaths of the other members of the tontine! For the sake of that man's lust for gold, my family has endured a curse for over a century!

     "But you're a military historian-of a sort. Recall Corinth, Mississippi where Bates ordered three companies to frontally assault the rebel cannons to cover General McArthur's brigade! One hundred seventy-five men killed-as well as four captains-all of whom were in the tontine! And what about Murfreesboro? He orders a hopeless attack to break the confederate lines-two hundred men killed as well as Captains Joshua Allen and Eliza Smith-members of the tontine. Yes, he was there at the hospital when Captain Alexander Grissom died of his wounds-in Bates' arms no less. Surely that was not by cooincidence!

     "And all that time, wagon loads of his loot taken from farms and plantations rumbled north to Davenport. The other officers had to match his stolen investments in the tontine or lose everything. Several were forced to appeal to their parents for cash to help them match Bates' contributions to stay in the tontine.

     "Now I will tell you what you will refuse to believe. Do you know the stories of the eight ghosts sentries saw the month before Missionary Ridge? They were the spirits of the officers Bates had so cunningly killed! They were so hungry for revenge on Bates that they chased after him for the rest of his life!

     "And I' m sure you've heard the story how Bates was taking ladanum after being wound at Chicamauga. Another myth. Nightmare and a wounded conscious drove the man to take something to keep him from walking in his sleep through camp! That is why he ordered the charge at Missionary Ridge! He wasn't yelling, "Drive those devils back to Hell, boys!" at the Rebels. He was shouting it at the ghosts of his victims! Because of his guilty conscious, the regiment was nearly wiped out-470 men dead! His three staff officers, Lieutenant Colonel Ewell Davies, Major Danford Hawkings, and Captain Ellsworth Bernhardt---all dead. There were only two survivors in the tontine left: Bates and Major Herbert Bevins. Bates could have just trusted his luck and let the regiment be disbanded-but he wanted it all! And for that he had to keep Bevins in his sights. That's why he badgered every state legislator to keep the unit together, not his gallant esprit d'corps! That's what got them assigned as guards at the Rock Island POW camp.

     Many of the men wanted to leave the regiment because they knew in their hearts that something evil drove the phantoms to follow the regiment so far from their graves. Can you understand why a man's blood would run as ice water through his veins as he nightly beheld the apparitions of dead men drifting past, whispering "Betrayal" and "Vengeance"? Think what such terrors would do to a man! But Bates convinced every man to stay on because they would get a bonus from the state as well as more pay because they were veterans. Can you imagine the dread in these men on guard duty every night? They felt they had been pursued relentlessly all the way through Tennessee by thees ghosts of their dead commanders---because they had were responsible for the haunting! Is it any wonder the regiment's sentries started shooting at anything that moved in the night? That's the real reason why they fired on the prisoner's barracks; cold fear running wild through the depths of their souls!

     But Bevins was still alive and I'm sure Bates could taste his blood. Yet, he knew that only the Front could provide the best credible opportunity for Bevins' demise. He pulled every string, called-in every favor, and greased every palm so that by June, the regiment was back up to strength and by the end of the month was back with the Army of the Cumberland on its way to Atlanta.

     No one specifically suspected Bates of his crimes, they had all happened in the fog of war. But if you read all the letters, you can piece the evidence together. The ghosts of course knew his guilt and haunted him into insanity until he died at Massaraty Asylum. Believe me, these ghosts are not some fabrication of a deluded old man! I have seen them! Eleven bloody spectres prowled this house still seeking my ancestor's shade. They cried out his name in the dark of night with such rage and frustration! They knew he was in the house but couldn't find him! But when I was young, one horrible night I discovered the thing they had not: Bates' ghost was hiding in his gear. Yes! In the sword and pistol and cap-that is where he has hid for all these years from those hungering for revenge. When I sold to relics to you, they sensed he had fled them. Since then, this house has been quiet for the first time in 120 years! I am sorry that he has taken up residence in your friend. It was selfish of me-but I am old and weary of living on a battlefield of vengeful souls."

     I left him then. He was just some old kook and I'd heard a belly full. But when I got near my car, the trunk flew open and a box jumped up to the ledge of the trunk by itself! An' I swore I heard people shouting and musketry and a bugle. Then Bates' pistol, sword and cap fell onto the drive. I froze, too scared to budge. Nothing more happened. After a bit, I gathered up the gear, dropped it on Professor Malby's doorstep and headed home.

     On Sunday the 13th, I phoned down to the hospital where Felix was staying. The hospital told me he died that morning from complications with his breathing. I'm not sure whether Bates' ghost had something directly to do with it, but I hope that those eleven ghosts---

     Well, I just hope.