Island of Saints: A Story of the One Principle That Frees the Human Spirit

by Andy Andrews

  Then he cocked his head, smiled, and leaned closer. “And I’ll tell you somethin’ else. Don’t matter now noways. Several of them German boys, when they yanked ’em out of the U-boat, had ticket stubs from the Saenger Theatre in their pockets.” He studied my surprised expression for a beat or two, then added, “Yep. The Saenger Theatre. That’d be North Rampart Street in downtown New Orleans.”

  Mr. King smiled as I scribbled furiously in my notebook. “Course you won’t find anything in the history books about that particular little event.”

  Sheesh, I thought, I couldn’t find anything about any of this in history books! Glancing up, I asked the obvious question anyway. “Why not?”

  “’Cause nobody knew. Navy boy from Elberta told me. Bernard Hanson. Bernie’s dead now, but he told me. Things was differ’nt back then, son. The government was keeping it quiet as they could. They figured if we knew the Nazis was ashore and mingling with us—hey, folks’d be shootin’ ever’ blue-eyed stranger that came to town. Probably a good thing. Not to tell, I mean.”

  I agreed with him, talked a bit more, paid for our meal, thanked Mr. King, and left. I did check some records to which I had access through a United States Navy source. Mr. King was correct. The items found in the U-boat are still on file at the Pentagon. For some reason, however, after all these years, that specific U-boat’s number is still classified and not even available through the Freedom of Information Act. But with my own eyes, I saw the four ticket stubs from the Saenger. They are preserved in heavy lamination and rest on an admiral’s desk at Annapolis. By the way, in case you are curious . . . the soup was tomato.

  My most meaningful contact came about quite by chance really. We were leaving church one Sunday morning, me with our younger boy in my arms, when I happened into Mr. and Mrs. Newman. They have been members of Orange Beach United Methodist Church since the congregation began meeting in a doublewide trailer years ago. The Newmans appeared to be in their eighties, maybe older, and he had been a commercial fisherman in his younger years.

  As strange as it may seem to call an old couple “cute,” everyone agrees they are exactly that. He calls her “Mrs. Newman,” and she calls him just plain “Newman.” They are among the nicest, most popular people in the church. I rarely see them together that they are not holding hands. She is always laughing and smiling, while Mr. Newman, also jovial and quick to tease, is quite a hit with the kids. He carries candy and gum in his pockets, and my boys, especially, love him.

  After saying hello and allowing time for the children to collect their usual favorite (root beer lollipops), I realized that, for whatever reason, I had neglected to talk to the Newmans about my latest obsession. Both had been supposed pioneers of the area, I knew, and were favorite people of mine so, less careful than I was with someone I didn’t know, I blurted out a quick question: “Hey, do you two know anything about German U-boats in the Gulf during World War II?” They continued to look at the boys, and thinking they had not heard me, I started to ask the question again when Mrs. Newman fixed me with her usual smile. “Why in the world do you ask that, Andy?”

  I shrugged. “I found some stuff—pictures and buttons. Anyway, I’m just doing some research.”

  “Writing a book?”

  “I don’t really know yet. It’s more a novelty than anything else at this point. But I gotta tell you, I am somewhat amazed that most people do not seem to remember this . . . You and Mr. Newman lived here then, didn’t you?” She nodded, and we looked at her husband, who had kneeled and was playing with my children. I asked again: “What do you know about all that?”

  She put her hand on her husband’s shoulder. Still looking at me, she said, “Well, Newman knows a lot about it, but nobody wants to listen to our old stories anymore.”

  “I do,” I replied.

  Mr. Newman stood as his wife invited me for coffee the next day. “You’ll tell Andy some stories, won’t you, honey?” she asked him.

  “Sure, if you want to listen,” he said to me as we shook hands and walked toward the church parking lot. “Course my memory ain’t what it used to be . . . what was your name again?” I raised my eyebrows, and he chuckled at his own joke. “Nine in the morning okay with you?”

  I ARRIVED AT THEIR HOUSE THE NEXT MORNING PROMPTLY ON the hour. At the end of a tree-lined street, the Newmans lived in one of Foley’s older neighborhoods. They had moved away from the water more than a decade earlier when he sold his fishing boat and, with a tidy profit from the bay-front property that had been theirs since 1948, bought this three-bedroom brick home for cash on his seventieth birthday.

  Familiar with the place, I stepped from my vehicle and ventured over to the edge of the driveway to look at the famous Newman blueberry bushes. They were bare now, but in late spring would be loaded with the tiny, luscious fruit. And then would come the packs of kids, mine included, who picked from the bushes, stuffing more berries into their mouths than into the buckets they held. Neither of the Newmans ever ate a berry—stained their dentures, they claimed—but both of them watered and fertilized those bushes as if their lives depended on it.

  I climbed the steps to the porch where Polly and I had sat many times, eating sandwiches and drinking sweet iced tea with the older couple while our boys gorged themselves with ripe blueberries. Mrs. Newman met me at the front door. Her hair was the gray-blue color I had seen on many older women, and the dress she wore was awash with bright pink and dark red triangles. I had never seen a picture of her as a young woman, but it was easy enough to imagine. She was still beautiful.

  “Come on in,” she said, holding the door open. “You like lots of sugar in your coffee, don’t you.” She stated it as a fact, not as a question.

  “Yes, ma’am, with cream . . . and could you put some extra caffeine in it?” I teased.

  She laughed politely and led me into the kitchen where Mr. Newman waited. He rose from his seat at the breakfast table as I entered the room. About five ten or so in brown work pants and a plaid flannel shirt, he still had the ruddy complexion of a man who had spent his life outdoors. Extending his hand, he greeted me. “Sit down, sit down. I got ahead of you on the coffee. It’s the only thing keeping my heart beating, I think.”

  “That and me, you old man,” Mrs. Newman said with a cackle, which prompted her husband to grin and wink at me. After pouring more coffee for him and a first cup for me, Mrs. Newman sat down at the table with us. She moved her chair to face me and eased her left hand into his right.

  “At church yesterday,” Mrs. Newman began, “you mentioned you found some things . . . buttons and photographs, I believe you said. Photographs of what?”

  I answered their questions—they were mostly her questions—and before long, I was afforded two unexpected surprises. One, they were extremely computer literate, something seldom seen in people of their generation. And two, they knew more about the subject of U-boats in the Gulf of Mexico than anyone with whom I had been able to speak.

  Mr. Newman brought out a cardboard box of files printed from Web sites and copied from library books. He showed me a list of every American vessel sunk by U-boats during the war, their tonnage, location, and crew numbers. He answered questions that, frankly, I had not thought to ask. I was shocked at the average age of a U-boat crew (just twenty years old) and amazed at the conditions they endured.

  Mr. Newman allowed me to examine written accounts by crew members of torpedoed tankers and freighters. The versions varied wildly according to the ship and the teller of the tale. Some stories were bitter narratives by survivors of sunken vessels whose crews had been savagely machine-gunned from their lifeboats by the U-boat that had torpedoed their ship, then surfaced in their midst. Others carefully recorded accounts of U-boats allowing the crew members to row away from their doomed ship before it was sunk. Then, in amazement, they watched as the U-boat’s officers emerged from the conning tower only to give them food, water, and compass bearings toward land.

  “There was a difference betw
een a German and a Nazi,” Mr. Newman stated. “The Kriegsmarine had a lot of Germans . . . not so many Nazis.” I frowned. Honestly it was not a distinction I had ever made. Noting my confusion and perhaps interpreting it as disbelief, the old man said, “You see a difference between Americans and the Ku Klux Klan, don’t you?” I nodded. “Well, there you go.” I was silent for a moment, while he wiped his face roughly with his hand.

  Mrs. Newman interrupted. “While I never actually saw a U-boat,” she said, “I talked to a few who did. Newman and I have always been curious about this period in history. The submarines were here. They were in the Gulf, though it seems no one remembers. In any case, we became curious about the men. Obviously—I mean, read the accounts of the sinkings—more than occasionally there were compassionate men in positions of leadership.”

  “The Kriegsmarine,” Mr. Newman said, “and specifically the U-boat service, was an area in the German military where a vessel’s crew was generally able to think and act as smaller, individual entities. The captain was law, and whatever he ordered was carried out. Therefore, if the ship’s officers were decent men, the crew behaved and dealt with their enemies in a decent way . . . that is to say, at least, they fought under the rules of the Geneva Convention . . . none of this shooting helpless men in the water. In the Gulf, a U-boat crew was two thousand miles from the High Command, and though there were Nazi party officials on every boat and ship, the officers and crews, for the most part, considered themselves German—not Nazi—and didn’t hold the same sadistic beliefs as Hitler and his cronies.”

  The second time we got together, Polly and I met with the Newmans at Wolf Bay Lodge, a favorite lunch place in nearby Elberta. I had more questions to ask, and Mrs. Newman wanted to see the items I had uncovered beneath the tree. Between bites of fried oyster sandwiches and crab claws and sips of sweet iced tea, we talked—mostly about the pictures. The Newmans seemed to have the same fascination about the family picture that we had, and both were curious about the Iron Cross and the U-boat officer’s ring.

  By my third visit, we had almost run out of things to discuss. Mr. Newman had taken ill and was not his usual jolly self. As he went to the bedroom to lie down, his wife moved me into their living room. She showed me pictures of fishing boats and satsuma groves and what the beach looked like before anyone knew what a condo was.

  We sat on the couch, and she smiled as the gentle sounds of her husband’s snoring drifted through the closed bedroom door. “He is a good man,” she said simply.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I agreed with a nod. I didn’t really have anything else to say.

  “Day after tomorrow, we are going to Louisiana for a few weeks. Do you need to talk to us anymore?”

  “Not about this, I don’t think.” I shrugged. “I’m sort of at a dead end. I appreciate your help, though. It’s all so interesting, and yet . . .” I paused, searching for the completion of a thought I couldn’t quite grasp.

  “And yet what?” she prodded.

  I sighed. “I guess I was hoping to wrap it all up in a neat little package.”

  “Life is seldom that way.”

  “Well, don’t think I’m just finding that out.” She smiled. “I was just hoping, at least, to find out where the things I found buried in our yard came from. But, I suppose, that’s too much to expect. After all, it’s been more than half a century.” Chuckling dryly, I added, “And my wife is still concerned about the family in the picture.”

  Mrs. Newman reached over and patted my hand. “Things have a way of working out, son. You tell your sweet Polly that that family is fine.”

  “All right, I will,” I said, not really convinced that it mattered. Preparing to leave, I hugged her and asked her to thank Mr. Newman for me. As it turned out, she didn’t have to. He woke up as we were saying good-bye and insisted on walking me to my car.

  I drove home with an uneasy feeling. Things in my life generally “came together,” but this had not. Instead, I struggled with a perplexing riddle that had consumed my time, derailed my writing schedule, and was apparently unsolvable to boot. What a mess!

  That night after dinner, Polly herded the boys to the bathtub while I cleaned the kitchen. When the phone rang, I answered and was surprised to hear Mrs. Newman’s voice on the other end. She wanted to let me know, she said, that Newman was better.

  “Thanks,” I replied, somewhat curious that she would call just to relay that information, but I played along. “I’m glad to hear it. He is a great guy.”

  “Yes, he is.” She stopped briefly as if to make up her mind about something, then continued, “Andy?”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “Have you ever been to the old Civil War fort?”

  I knew she was talking about Fort Morgan. The massive old stone-and-earthworks stands on the tip of a peninsula that runs almost twenty miles due west of town. The peninsula is squeezed by the Gulf on its southern shore and the waters of Mobile Bay to the north. I answered her question. “Yes, ma’am. I’ve been there.”

  “I never mentioned this because it was only a rumor . . . Newman says I shouldn’t say anything . . .” She spoke haltingly, and her voice grew faint as if she were pulling the phone away from her mouth.

  “Mrs. Newman . . . ,” I said.

  “Yes?”

  “Tell me.”

  “Well, people used to say a Nazi spy was shot out there . . . on the peninsula . . . that’s what people used to say . . . that one was killed and buried, and no one ever found out. I just thought you might want to know.”

  I hung up the phone and sat down heavily in one of the kitchen chairs. “She just thought I might want to know,” I said to myself out loud. My mind was spinning. I have Nazi medals and a picture of Adolf Hitler in my backyard. German U-boats torpedoed tankers right off the coast here, and nobody remembers. “And, oh, by the way, I think a spy was shot down the street . . . just thought you’d want to know!”

  Shaking my head, I stood up and, before I got back to the dishes in the sink, turned to the telephone in its cradle and said, “Thanks a lot.”

  PART

  TWO

  CHAPTER 4

  July 16, 1942

  CAPTAIN WALTER CROSLAND GLANCED OVER HIS LEFT shoulder. The lights of Havana were still visible off the port stern. He yawned and slid his pocket watch from his pants, angling it into the glow cast by the ship’s dials and gauges. It was almost three o’clock in the morning, and the freighter Gertrude was not yet thirty miles off the northeast coast of Cuba. Crosland reached for his cigarettes and tried to ignore the uneasiness that had tugged at him since leaving the harbor more than three hours earlier.

  There were U-boats in the area. He knew it, and so did everyone else. That’s why he was running at night with his lights out, something he had never done. Only three days earlier, the steamship Oneida, a massive 2,309-ton vessel sailing around the eastern tip of Cuba, was sent to the bottom by a pair of torpedoes that struck her in the main engine compartments. After news of that disaster filtered in, Captain Crosland had delayed his departure in hopes that the U-boat—surely there was only one—might sail away in search of more productive hunting grounds.

  There was a limit, however, to the delay the Gertrude ’s cargo could withstand. A small freighter, she was loaded with sixteen tons of onions, among other assorted fruits and vegetables. It was food for the fighting men, Crosland knew, and as such, was fair game for the “wolves of the sea.” Leery of spoilage, the captain had steered out of port at midnight, but was bound up by strong winds and heavy swells. The freighter was barely making ten knots.

  The bridge door opened as Briley, his first mate and the officer on watch, came inside with a mug of steaming coffee. “Everyone’s sacked out, Cap’n, and all’s clear except for these seas. Still only moderate, though . . . three to four feet.”

  Crosland grunted acknowledgment as he accepted the coffee from the younger man. The deck pitched as he took a sip. He grimaced and said, “Well, whether I pour it all o
ver my arms or get it down my gut, I s’pose it’ll keep me awake.”

  Briley chuckled dutifully, then spoke. “Cap’n, will we be . . .”

  Without a hint of warning, a piercing squeal followed by a loud, roaring voice washed over them. “Achtung!” The captain ducked, hunching his shoulders, while Briley involuntarily dove to the floor. “Achtung!” the voice came again. “Attention!” This time in English. Almost immediately, Crosland recognized the voice as coming from some type of loudspeaker. It rang with electronic feedback, but was clear and so obviously close that it had startled the men to the point of near panic.

  Gathering his wits, Crosland grabbed the ship’s wheel and desperately began turning the freighter to the starboard, away from the thundering voice. That the voice had addressed them first in German had not escaped his notice. Once more, the disembodied voice from the dark boomed across the water, again in English, this time adding another command: “Shut down your engines, and abandon your ship immediately!”

  For a moment, Crosland actually considered running, but was quickly overcome by the reality of the situation. A U-boat—it was obviously a U-boat—had tracked and maneuvered ahead of him. The submarine was faster, it was armed, and it would undoubtedly destroy him if he sought to escape. Without delay, the Gertrude’s master palmed the button overriding the big diesels and snapped, “Briley, get the crew off.”

  Crosland flipped an alarm switch. A siren from within the ship began to scream in short, shrill bursts. The first mate still had not moved from the floor. “Briley, get up! Let’s get this crew off!”

  “Cap’n, should we . . .”

  Crosland kicked the terrified man and screamed, “Get up now! They’re gonna sink this ship! Get the men into the lifeboats! Go!”

  As Briley ran below, Crosland exited the bridge to the outside, searching vainly for the U-boat he knew was just beyond his vision. The voice assaulted his senses once more. “Abandon your ship immediately! Abandon your ship immediately!”