The Heart Mender

by Andy Andrews

  I spoke up. “I already know what my first two questions are . . .”

  “All right,” Josef said.

  I took that as my cue. “Number one, who is Danny? Number two . . . did she really beat the daylights out of you on the beach? I want to hear that story!”

  They laughed, but Helen immediately got up and returned a moment later with a framed photograph. “This is Danny Gilbert,” she said. “He was our son. He had Down syndrome.”

  I took the picture and saw that the subject was a grown man. His affliction was evident, but the light in his eyes was undeniable. “He was your son?” I asked.

  They smiled. “He was,” Josef said. “Danny was actually the biological son of some very dear friends of ours, Billy and Margaret Gilbert. They owned a café down what is now Highway 59. When Margaret passed away in 1954, Billy was lost. He missed her terribly, of course, but was really concerned about Danny. Billy was getting up in years, and we all knew Danny couldn’t live by himself . . . so Danny came to live with us. We never had any other children, and he called her ‘Mama Helen’, so we called him our son. He seemed to like it.”

  “So did we,” Helen said.

  “So did we,” Josef agreed. Pointing into the den toward the back of the house, he said, “All those things are Danny’s in there. Danny did those.”

  Leading me into the den, Helen turned on the overhead lights and stepped back. I was in awe. The entire room was filled with carvings. And they were stunning. Mostly birds and animals, here and there a flower, there was even a bust of Abraham Lincoln.

  “You have got to be kidding,” I gasped. “These are . . . they are incredible. I’ve never seen anything like this. How many are there?”

  “We have about six hundred left,” Helen said proudly. “There’s a store in New Orleans that we allow to sell two pieces a month. They haven’t gotten less than fifteen hundred dollars for one in more than three years now. The money goes to education for children like Danny.”

  “Hey, look at this,” Josef said, digging in his pocket. “This is my favorite. It’s the first thing he ever did. I wouldn’t take a million dollars for it—not even for charity.”

  I took the small item from the old man and recognized it immediately as a speckled trout. The piece was small. Worn and nicked from the years spent in Josef’s pocket, it did not possess the sophistication of the artist’s later work, but because it was the very first “Danny Gilbert” and treasured by the owner, its value was indeed priceless.

  I didn’t want to make the old couple sad, but I was curious. “When did Danny . . . ahhh—”

  “Danny died in 1961,” Helen said, smiling. “He was forty-nine.”

  WE TALKED FOR HOURS . . . THROUGH LUNCH, WHICH WE ATE on the back porch, and on into the afternoon. It seemed I actually did have a thousand questions. “Is your name really Newman?”

  “No,” he said. “The fishermen at the docks all called me the ‘new man’ for a long while. Then it was ‘Josef the new man’ and finally just ‘Josef Newman.’ When Helen and I got married, I put ‘Josef Newman’ on the certificate, and no one ever questioned it.”

  “So you are really married?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes,” Helen replied, “but not until 1947. It was well after the war before we felt safe enough to try to get the paperwork.”

  “Wan made that happen,” Josef said.

  “Wan was your best man, sweetheart.”

  “That’s true. That’s true.”

  As the afternoon wore on, I found myself attempting to keep all the stories straight. The conversation was moving in ten different directions at once. I thought then, and still do, that it might have been the first time Josef and Helen talked about some of this. “Wait,” I said. They looked at me patiently. “You mean Wan . . . the same guy who shot at you with the pistol?”

  “Yes.” They laughed.

  “What about the English accent?”

  “What about it?” Josef asked.

  “What happened to it? That’s such a great part of the story.”

  Josef grinned. “I kept it up for years.” He shrugged.

  “But it faded away. Along with all the people who remembered it, I suppose.”

  I asked permission to change the subject and started down another path. “Can I ask what you did with Schneider’s body?” Josef grimaced, and Helen looked very uncomfortable. I backed up. “That’s okay, I just—”

  “No,” Josef broke in, “You’re fine, it’s just . . . you know . . . not really anything I ever thought I’d be talking about.”

  “I understand.”

  He looked at his wife. “You okay?” She nodded, and he turned back to me. “We just dragged him off and buried him. I mean, we got out a ways from my little cabin.” I must have been frowning. Josef continued to explain, “You got to understand. That was a different time. No forensics, a deputy in on it . . .”

  “In on it?” Helen said. “Wan shot him.”

  Josef nodded toward her. “You know what I mean. Like I said, it was a different time. Anyway, I still feel like Wan did the right thing.”

  “I do too,” Helen was quick to add. “I didn’t mean to intimate that he didn’t.”

  “And it wasn’t like anyone was looking for Ernst Schneider.” Josef shook his head as if to rid himself of a nasty memory. “He was a bad one.”

  “And nobody ever found out?” Neither spoke. I asked again: “So you don’t think anybody ever knew?”

  Helen couldn’t stand it. She answered, “I think Billy knew. I think Wan told him.”

  I looked at Josef, who nodded in agreement. “Yeah,” he said, “I think so too. I think Wan felt like he had to tell him.”

  “How so?” I asked.

  “After we buried Schneider—that very day—Wan went and arrested Harris Kramer. He found the radio Schneider had been using up in Kramer’s attic and pinned it on Kramer. He’d been trying to get Kramer for a long time anyway. And he was guilty . . . Wan just got him for something else.”

  I shook my head in amazement.

  “Anyway, when Wan took old Kramer in, Billy put two and two together—connecting one German spy with another—and was about to make a big stink about it—you know, get the posse, let’s go find this other one—but nobody else knew there was another one . . . much less that he was already dead. So Wan told Billy what happened in order to keep him quiet.” He paused, then added, “Kramer yelled bloody murder about another Nazi ashore, but everybody figured he was trying to save his own skin. Nobody believed him.”

  “And Wan never said anything about you?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Nope, never did. Probably as much out of respect for Helen as anything. He’d heard me through the window that day, telling Schneider that I loved her . . . I don’t know. Maybe that was it. He didn’t take his eye off me for a long time, though. He loved Helen too.”

  “Oh, Josef . . . ,” Helen scoffed.

  “It’s true. You know it.”

  “Well, I’m just glad Shirley came along for Wan.”

  “Who’s Shirley?” I asked. My mind was swimming.

  “Shirley was a local girl,” Helen said. “From Robertsdale anyway. She and Wan were married before we were. Nineteen forty-six, I think.”

  “Sounds right,” Josef agreed.

  “Is Wan still alive?” I asked.

  “No,” Josef said. “Wan got cancer. Passed away about fifteen years ago.”

  “Shirley’s still alive, though. She’s not a Cooper anymore.” Helen smiled mischievously. “She’s a Warren now.” She waited for what she’d just said to sink in.

  It did. “Oh, come on!” I exclaimed, as Josef chuckled. “Seriously?” I said. “Shirley Warren that works at the state park? That Shirley Warren?”

  “That’s the one.” Helen grinned.

  I couldn’t stand it. I had to ask, “Does she know that you—”

  “Nooo. Nooo,” they said. “Wan never told her.”

  I was curious abo
ut Josef’s friends and family left in Germany. “Did they ever know you made it off the sub?”

  He shrugged. “No family left. And as for friends, there was Hans Kuhlmann, of course, but everyone else in Germany was so displaced by the fighting that when it was all over, people just assumed that the friends they no longer saw—were dead.”

  “What about Kuhlmann . . . your sub commander? Did you ever see him again? Or communicate to him in some way that you were safe . . . alive?”

  Josef spoke softly to Helen, then turned to me. As he continued to talk, she slipped from the table and out of the room. “I never saw Hans again. Neither did I hear anything about him for years.”

  Helen walked back into the room and handed me a copied article from a newspaper. It was an Associated Press article, carried by the Birmingham News, dated June 9, 2001. The headline read: “Remains of Sunken WWII German Sub Found in Gulf.” I glanced at Josef, who remarked, “Hans never made it home.”

  Reading just the first two paragraphs gave me chills:

  New Orleans. A sunken World War II submarine has been discovered 5,000 feet deep in the Gulf of Mexico, rerouting a planned oil company pipeline and rewriting a bit of wartime history.

  BP and Shell Oil Company, which had been surveying the Gulf floor for a joint pipeline project, announced the discovery Friday of the U-166, which was sunk in 1942 after it sank an American ship.

  “She was sunk by depth charges dropped from a navy patrol boat,” Josef said. “The U-166 attacked and sank the Robert E. Lee, then was herself attacked and destroyed from above.”

  “Tell him about Gertrude,” Helen prompted.

  “Gertrude?”

  “Gertrude was Hans’s wife,” Josef said. “Beautiful girl. I was in their wedding. I talked to her as recently as last year.”

  “She’s still alive?” I asked incredulously.

  “She was last year,” Josef said. “After the sub was found, I made an effort to find her, and did. She is still in Cologne . . . invests quite heavily in the stock market. All blue chip American companies, she says.” He laughed as I shook my head in wonder.

  IT WAS DARK WHEN I FINALLY LEFT WITH A PROMISE TO RETURN. I was exhausted, my mind still reeling from what I had discovered in the lives of these two extraordinary people. That day was a conclusion of sorts—the unveiling of a mystery whose answers for so long had remained just out of reach. But it was also a beginning. And I am encouraged by what I feel when I contemplate the difference their decisions—and very lives— have made.

  Josef had already said good-bye when Helen walked me to the door. She hugged me and told me how much she had enjoyed the day. “It is a bit strange to talk about that time,” she said thoughtfully, “. . . after all these years.”

  I stopped on the front porch. Now that Josef wasn’t around, there was something else on her mind . . . I could feel it. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. Just . . . tired, I suppose.” I waited. “Andy?”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “Are you planning to write about this? Our lives, I mean?”

  So that was it. “Well,” I answered carefully, “I won’t if you don’t want me to.”

  She thought a moment. “Do you think our story could help? By that, I mean, could we help folks somehow?”

  “Mrs. Newman,” I said earnestly, “I believe that there are people who struggle every day with the challenges you and Josef have conquered. And frankly I am one of them. Yes, I think your story will help. Who benefits when we come to understand and harness the power of forgiveness? Children, marriages, careers, nations . . . the list goes on and on.”

  “I don’t want Josef to be hurt. He’s lived in America for so long now. What if there are those who don’t understand?” Then she brightened. “I have an idea . . . if you write about this, can you change the names?”

  “Sure.” I nodded. “That won’t be any problem.”

  Helen sighed. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t mean to act scared. I’m an old woman now, and I just get like this sometimes.” She hugged me again and wiped what I hoped was a happy tear from her cheek.

  “Listen,” I said in farewell. “I promise, you will not have cause to be fearful or embarrassed by anything I write. And besides,” I added, “I will make sure the publisher classifies the book as ‘Self-Help’ or ‘Personal Growth’ or one of the other ‘Fiction’ categories. No one will ever believe a word of it.

  WHERE ARE THEY NOW

  Hans Gunther Kuhlmann

  His body still rests with the remains of his crew (minus Josef Bartels Landermann) in five thousand feet of water due south from the Louisiana coastline. Considered a “war grave” and protected by international treaty, the U-166 will not be recovered or disturbed. Its location was discovered June 6, 2001, in a joint venture between BP and Shell Oil as they were surveying the gulf floor for a pipeline project.

  Ironically, the U-166 was found less than a mile from the wreck of the Robert E. Lee, the last vessel attacked and destroyed by Kuhlmann and his crew. A sixteen-foot sweep (steering) oar from one of Robert E. Lee’s lifeboats is mounted on a wall in the living room of author Andy Andrews.

  As of this writing, Kuhlmann’s wife, Gertrude, is still alive. She is remarried and lives quietly under her new name in Cologne, Germany.

  Wan Cooper

  Sherriff’s Deputy Wan Cooper remained close friends with Josef and Helen until his death from lung cancer in 1989. His widow, Shirley, remarried and has recently been widowed again. She is retired from her long-time job at the Gulf State Park in Gulf Shores, Alabama, and now volunteers with the “Mother’s Day Out” program at a local church.

  Margaret and Billy Gilbert

  They had closed the café and retired when Margaret passed away suddenly in 1954. Recovering from a broken hip she had suffered in a fall, doctors surmised it was a blood clot that stopped her heart. For a time, Danny Gilbert seemed to relish the role of comforter for his father, but Billy—brokenhearted and in poor health already—soon thereafter succumbed to the ravages of emphysema. He died in 1955. Billy and Margaret are buried next to each other in a Baldwin County cemetery.

  Danny Gilbert

  Billy Gilbert signed legal custody of Danny over to Josef and Helen six months before he died. Danny had already moved in with the Newman’s—a decision that had been made in order to lessen the trauma of Billy’s death to Danny.

  Danny lived happily for several more years, finally dying in his sleep at forty-nine, long past the age any doctor had ever predicted. He was buried in the same cemetery plot with Billy and Margaret. Danny’s intricate carvings are now scattered all over the southeastern United States, most in homes of people who have no knowledge of the artist or history of the pieces in their possession. Interestingly, Danny never carved his name into a single creation, always insisting, “God made this, not me.” The small speckled trout— the Christmas gift from Danny to Josef—now rests proudly on a shelf in Andy Andrews’s office.

  Harris Kramer

  Kramer was captured within hours of Schneider’s death. Both Helen and Josef had seen the old boat captain in Foley with Schneider, and when they described him to Wan, the deputy knew exactly who he was looking for. When Wan found Schneider’s radio in Kramer’s attic, it was all the evidence he needed for an arrest.

  Curiously, Kramer never made it to trial. He was held in Bay Minette, Alabama, in the Baldwin County Jail. Placed in a cell with seven other men, within a week he was dead. Found swinging from the bars with a bed sheet around his neck, it was officially ruled a suicide, though no one ever adequately explained how he managed to hang himself with his hands tied behind his back.

  He was buried in an unmarked grave with no coffin and—so the story goes—placed in the ground face down. Even after death, it seemed, no one liked Harris Kramer.

  Ernst Schneider

  Schneider’s body was dragged from the cabin where he was killed and buried in as deep a grave as Wan and Josef could dig in
the sand with their hands. According to the locals, there were no coyotes in those woods at that time (there are now), and as long as someone’s dog didn’t find the grave quickly, Schneider’s bones are very likely still there.

  From Highway 59 in Gulf Shores, Alabama, turn west onto highway 180 (the Fort Morgan Road). After almost six miles, you will come to the Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge on your left. This seven-thousand-acre tract of land was established by Congress in 1980 to be left untouched. It remains a perfect example of what it all looked like when Helen’s cabin and a few others were spread through the area.

  Keep driving. At the nine-mile mark, you will see a small dirt parking area. Stop here, get out, and walk the Pine Beach Trail. You can walk all the way to the gulf. Watch carefully because this is the area in which I am told the Nazi was buried. Depending on recent rain or wind, you just might be the first to spot Schneider’s bones peeking through the sand.

  Helen and Josef Newman

  Josef Bartels Landermann is still listed as an official casualty of the U-166. He was never reported missing from the sub and so, when it was sunk on the evening of July 30, 1942, Landermann went on the casualty list and has remained there ever since. See for yourself—read the entire crew list and look at pictures of Kuhlman and the sub at http://www.pastfoundation.org/U166/CrewList.htm.

  Schneider, the political officer onboard, was never listed as a crew member. Therefore, due to the purposeful destruction of documents during the last days of the Third Reich, it is not clear whether or not Nazi files ever recorded Schneider as missing or killed in action. In any case, it is safe to say that Josef Bartels Landermann is the only “official” discrepancy of the U-166.

  Josef Newman is still healthy, happy, and somewhat amused by this whole uncovering of his earlier life. Helen is somewhat less comfortable with the idea that anyone knows the truth. Soon after I presented Josef and Helen with a first draft of the manuscript, they made plans to move and have since done so. Insisting they planned this move all along, they are happy living in Louisiana and have requested that I say no more than that.