Ballwin Historian's New Book Tackles WWII & Romance

David Fiedler will celebrate the release of his new book, My Enemy, My Love this weekend, celebrating the author's second full-length venture into World War II literature.

Unlike his previous non-fiction book, Enemy Among Us: POWs in Missouri During WWII, Fiedler's new release explores the storyline of a German POW in the U.S. who has a love affair with an American woman. Resented by fellow prisoners and Allied Americans alike, Fiedler's book follows its characters in a piece of historical fiction that's carefully woven with domestic World War II history.

QnA with David Fiedler, author of My Enemy, My Love

Where did you originally grow up? How long did you live in Ballwin? 

Spent grade school years in Concordia, Mo., near Kansas City. Moved to St. Louis in time to start high school. I have been here since, going on 30 years, other than brief stints away for study and military service. We lived in Ballwin for five years after getting married; now residents of Sappington.

What inspired you to write first historical book, Enemy Among Us: POWs in Missouri During WWII?

In 1997, I was doing my annual two-week summer camp for the Army Reserve at Fort Leonard Wood. In the engineer museum there was a small display with black and white photos of German soldiers working on farms in central Missouri.  I was astounded to think of these enemy soldiers in Missouri in the middle of WWII, and no one I knew had ever heard of this. I began to research both to satisfy my own curiosity and for a magazine article on the topic I had proposed.  The more I poked into it, the more I realized this was a very big, very interesting topic to a lot of people. Over 15,000 German and Italian soldiers in two dozen camps across Missouri. It was a story that touched a lot of people, yet very few people knew anything about it, other than those who were directly involved.

My Enemy, My Love is largely based on real life. How did you first encounter the real-life tale? Exactly how much of My Enemy, My Love is true?

My Enemy, My Love weaves together a number of stories and episodes that people told me in the course of my research. For instance, four brothers in Chesterfield, the Hellwigs, ran a large farm in the Chesterfield bottoms. They had a year-round contingent of 400 Germans who lived there and worked on the farm and for other farmers there. A girl in one of the Hellwig families, nine-years-old at the time, kept noticing that her bicycle would be found in a different place in the morning from where she had parked it at night. Turns out a German POW had been using it to ride off and see a girlfriend somewhere. That kind of tale provides great inspiration. There were tales like this from places all over Missouri -- the kinds of things that were funny and interesting, but often rumor-based on impossible to verify or not necessarily relevant to the actual history. But which sure make for funny or poignant scenarios, particularly when a forbidden love relationship is a big piece of that.

Talk about the process for writing this book. For example, how much time did you spend trying to establish a historically accurate background or foreground versus time spent fleshing out the characters and scenarios born from your book?

This new novel was born in tandem with the original history, The Enemy Among Us.  I was already becoming well-versed in the historical accuracy part of it due to the research I was doing, it was just a matter if identifying the characters and the roles they'd play. And there were many sources of inspiration for the settings and scenarios from real life. For instance, having a large farming operation owned by a politically prominent family where POWs worked (which occurred in Missouri with Governor Lloyd Stark's nurseries and orchards in Louisiana, Mo) offers a deliciously tempting scenario where it's not just forbidden romance, but one that is dangerous because of the prominence of the family and the potential for political embarrassment should it be exposed.

What was the most challenging part of writing, My Enemy, My Love?

The most challenging part of writing the new novel was simply the discipline and effort required to go through the manuscript again and again, to edit and re-edit and sort and shuffle the order of chapters and storylines, etc.  It's easy to fall in love with your own writing and think that it is all great. It's like having children.  You think they're all awesome and can be somewhat blind to their faults. However, I think the more ruthless I became with the red pen each time I went through the editing process again, the better the story became.

As , your works to date include Images of America: Ballwin. How did you get involved in that project, and what about its research did you enjoy most?

I started writing as a freelance writer, a "stringer" it's called in the newspaper business for the Post-Dispatch and the Suburban Journals newspapers in the late 1990s. One of my earliest and most regular assignments was to cover the Ballwin City Council meetings. There I got to know Bob Kuntz, Ballwin's City Manager and Haley Morrison, the human resources manager. I also got tied in with the members of the Ballwin Historical Commission. When the historical commission decided to update its fabulous 1979 "green book" history of the city with a new edition, I indicated it would be a project that I would enjoy working on and expressed my interest in doing so. I was fortunate to be selected for this and enjoyed not only learning about the rich and fascinating history of this terrific place, but being involved in sharing that history with a new group of people, who have very good reason to be proud of where they live.

Fiedler will host a book-signing from 4 to 6 p.m. Sunday at the Sunset Hills Community Center at 3715 S. Lindbergh Blvd. in Sunset Hills, MO. To learn more about Fiedler, or purchase a copy of his work, visit www.davefiedler.com.