Wigwam Street: A Love Story
A whirlwind romance between D-Day and Operation Market Garden
Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, so over the next few Substacks I’ll present some of the love stories that will be featured in my forthcoming book, “Tales of Love, Food, Booze, Jumping Out of Airplanes and Winning World War 2.” Samuel Charles Feiler had just gotten out of the hospital when my neighbor Maurice Tydor, a D-Day veteran of the 101st Airborne Division, brought me to interview him in 1994. Born in 1907, Sam was among the oldest paratroopers at age 37 in 1944 and served as a dentist in the 101st. Sam and Lillian met in London after D-Day and married just before Operation Market Garden in
September. In fact, Sam was supposed to meet Lillian in London the day after their wedding but instead was restricted to quarters, and she didn’t hear from him for a week. In the interview, he referred to his new wife as a “kissless bride.” As he was medicated when I did the interview, he was in a fairly good mood, and Lillian, did much of the talking.
Aaron Elson: How did you two meet?
Sam Feiler: She picked me up in a whaddayacallit
Lillian Feiler: Don’t say that. He likes to kid around. No, we met in London. Actually, to tell the truth, I was with another boyfriend.
Sam Feiler: A British fella.
Lillian Feiler: It was a private club.
Sam Feiler: Wigwam Street, or something like that.
Lillian Feiler: Welbeck Street. Right in the heart of London.
Maurice Tydor: Were all the Jewish girls there, or she was the only one?
Lillian Feiler: Well, he didn’t know what I was, I’ll tell you. [I was just with] a fellow who knew somebody in the band. So he said — oh, in those clubs in those days, you had to be a member. It was a lot of hooey. It cost 30 pounds or something like that. So he says, “I’m not spending that [kind of] money. I’ll talk to my friend in the band.” And then he said, “Just wait here a minute.” So I was waiting there. Who walks in? Him with his buddy. He thought I was alone. And I wasn’t. I was waiting. What did you say to me? I can’t remember. He said, “Would you care to dance?”
I said, “No, I’m waiting for my friend, but he’ll be back in a minute.”
So he said, “Oh, what’s your phone number?”
I said, “I don’t give out my number to people I don’t know,” or something like that. I said, “Oh, here’s my boyfriend coming.” I saw him coming from the stairs. “So I’ve got to go now.”
So he said, “Quickly, what’s the number?” I think I must have given it to him, I don’t know why, it’s crazy; no, I didn’t give him my home number, I gave [the number] to where I worked. I worked in London. I did war work, very secretive, but I worked in the office. But he told me afterwards he wrote it down on this little matchbook in the men’s room, because he couldn’t remember it.
So I went to work and I get a call, somebody calls up, okay, a girl I was very friendly with, a girl on the switchboard, said to me, “Hey, there’s a Yank.” All they know is, “There’s a Yank on the phone for you.”
And I said, “No, I don’t know anyone.” I couldn’t think of anyone. And she says, “Well, he’s asking for you. He said he met you in London.”
So I said, “No, I can’t talk to him now.” Oh, she told him, “It’s highly irregular. No phone calls,” because nobody was allowed to call. It was highly irregular to get anybody because we were doing things for the Navy, and nobody was allowed to get private phone calls. And I thought, that’s the reason I gave him my number because I knew he wouldn’t get through, so I really didn’t think anything of it. However, because we were so close, she said, “Oh, I’ll let you talk to him this time.”
So then he wanted to meet me. Oh no, this was on a Friday. I said, “No, I don’t go out Friday night, I have to go straight home.” I did meet him. I said, “But, how about another night?” Oh, I gave in to him. Oh, he was a very persistent guy, by the way.
Maurice Tydor: Was this before Normandy?
Lillian Feiler: Yes, before, this was…
Sam Feiler: I was in England.
Maurice Tydor: We came back to England, it was after Normandy.
Lillian Feiler: Oh, and then he got a leave. He went with his buddy, who was a drinker, Frank what’s his name?
Sam Feiler: Jackendorf.
Lillian Feiler: No, I never heard that [name]
Maurice Tydor: Jackendorf was in the 502
Lillian Feiler: He said, “Come on Doc, let’s take a leave,” and he was a goody goody, wouldn’t do anything against the rules. He went by the book, you know what I mean? “Come on, Doc, let’s go to London.” And you were already on a short, you know, for a 24 or 48 hour pass. So that’s what they did, this guy that was with you, I can’t remember his name. Frank someone, I can’t remember. And he coaxed you to come up to London, so that’s what happened. That was his fateful day, the day he came to London. He didn’t want to go.
Maurice Tydor: So then what happened?
Lillian Feiler: So then he called me and he asked to meet me another day. I didn’t meet him that Friday night. I did meet him.
Sam Feiler: The next week, Saturday.
Lillian Feiler: Oh, he was forceful, I tell you. I turned him down about three times. I wasn’t ready to go out because my poor boyfriend, I mean …
Sam Feiler: I wanted to be a good boy. I wanted to be a good boy and she caught me. I wanted to be a good boy and she caught me.
Lillian Feiler: And then [he arranged to] meet me one day.
Sam Feiler: And then when I went looking for you you said you weren’t there and I said I looked all over for you.
“Then my boyfriend found out; somebody had seen me with a Yank.”
Lillian Feiler: We missed each other. I was a little late but we missed each other. And what happened after that? I think we caught up about an hour later. We did catch up with each other. And then my boyfriend found out; somebody had seen me with a Yank, that’s all they knew, the word was a Yank. They didn’t know rank or nothing. They didn’t know uniforms or what. And I didn’t know one from another, if he was an enlisted man or what. I wouldn’t know the difference, believe me. And then he came out to the house a couple of times, we lived in Hemington, near the airport, Heathrow. It wasn’t far from Heathrow.
Sam Feiler: I was so persistent.
Maurice Tydor: They never thought of a Yank being Jewish, right?
Lillian Feiler: Oh, I remember, when he thought — this is funny — when he said to me, he didn’t know I was Jewish. When I was young I was very skinny, I was very thin, and I didn’t particularly look it but I was thin, you know, it’s different. But he said to me, “What religion are you?” Oh, I know, he was trying to be cute. “What church do you go to?”
Sam Feiler: (laughing) I knew all the angles.
Lillian Feiler: I said, “Oh, I don’t go to church.” He said, “You don’t?” He lit up. He was so happy that I said that. He said, “You don’t?” I said, “I’m Jewish.” I told him.
Aaron Elson: Did you know he was Jewish?
Lillian Feiler: I didn’t know for sure but I had an idea. He looked really, I mean he always looked, [there are] some men that don’t look really Jewish, you can’t tell, even by their name. I mean he had a German sounding name but it didn’t mean, I thought he looked Jewish. So I said “I don’t go to church.” When he heard that he was so happy. But it was a way of getting around and not being discreet about, in case I wasn’t Jewish.
Maurice Tydor: Did you marry her after Normandy?
Sam Feiler: Before Normandy.
Maurice Tydor: You married her before Normandy? Or after when we came back?
Sam Feiler: Yeah, I married her in August. [D-Day was June 6th, 1944.]
Lillian Feiler: Oh, and then the colonel, a very nice man, when he knew they wanted us to get married in the thing where the guys [are] holding the flags up…
Maurice Tydor: With the chupah.
Lillian Feiler: But we didn’t go for that. You know, that’s all right for the other weddings, the gentile weddings. Anyway, then, when he wanted to, oh, then, he didn’t tell me, see, I knew so little, I was probably naïv. I was a young naïve girl and I didn’t know too much what they were doing and they weren’t allowed to tell anything. They were under secrecy.
Sam Feiler: The girls on the phone, the phone operators were warned not to say too much, and if you did they immediately ordered you…
Maurice Tydor: They cut you off. That’s how Colonel Weissburg got kicked out because he told somebody, his wife.
Sam Feiler: I wondered whatever happened to Colonel Weissburg. He was a geisse geschichte.
Maurice Tydor: He was a nice guy. He was very popular with the men.
Lillian Feiler: In the meantime, as he always tells everybody I was a kissless bride. We got married finally in Newbury.
Maurice Tydor: Oh, god, Newbury Commons?
Lillian Feiler: He wanted to get married. I think he sensed something was going on and he didn’t want to lose me for nothing and he thought that once he went away, he didn’t know when he’d be back.
Samuel Feiler: And I wouldn’t tell her.
Maurice Tydor: Holland [Operation Market Garden] was coming up.
Lillian Feiler: He didn’t know what was happening and I didn’t know what was happening. So he was pushing me to get married in this registry office in Newbury.
Sam Feiler: She had her own personal grapevine. She didn’t tell me what was going on.
Lillian Feiler: So we went to the, what day was it, into the registry office.
Sam Feiler: Yes, I met a man, the chief of the office force.
Lillian Feiler: We had to have two witnesses, and they got somebody from there to …
Sam Feiler: He opened up the book and he flips the pages and he gets to the page that weekend and he said, “Wait. What’s your name” and blah blah blah.
Lillian Feiler: And he said, “I’ve got no time. I’m going to be going away.” So what he did, he backdated it.
Sam Feiler: He backdated it.
Lillian Feiler: [Which was] very unusual for a man to do that, you know, they’re usually very proper. Oh yeah, we arranged to meet, so I went back to London. Oh, he says, he didn’t tell me anything, I didn’t know what was going on. He said, “I’m gonna be back at a certain hour. I went back to London that night, or was it that day? I didn’t stay in Hungerford that day.
Sam Feiler: It was one day.
Lillian Feiler: I wanted to go home. It was only a couple of hours by train. I couldn’t stay the night at a little bed and breakfast where they put you up, you know, nice little places. And they were very nice. In fact I did stay there a couple times to visit when he was there, just a bed and breakfast; it was a lovely lady in her home, she was such a lovely woman, very nice. They used to give you a big breakfast, beautiful clean plates, it was very nice.
Sam Feiler: Yeah, very nice.
Lillian Feiler: But that day, I wanted to go home. So he said, “I’m gonna meet you at a certain time.” Well that night he didn’t come. He tried to call me for love or money.
Sam Feiler: We got restricted.
Lillian Feiler: They got restricted. And that’s why he wanted to get married.
Maurice Tydor: Once you’re restricted you’re not allowed off the base.
Lillian Feiler: Once they had gone overseas, I don’t think he would have seen me again.
Sam Feiler: But you didn’t know Charlie Feiler. So anyway, in the meantime he’s supposed to meet me that night. He was going to come back and tell the colonel, you know, he got married. They were pretty close, he and the colonel. Out of respect, he had to tell him. Then, what happened, so I didn’t get this call, and I didn’t hear from him, and I couldn’t imagine what happened. And he was trying to go out, he went out of the, where he was stationed, to try and phone me, but they were alerted, no calls were allowed.
Sam Feiler: They wouldn’t connect us.
Lillian Feiler: They wouldn’t connect him. And he’s going crazy. In the meantime they went off, and I didn’t hear from him, and I wondered what happened.
Maurice Tydor: It wasn’t until Yom Kippur, that was Rosh Hashanah.
Sam Feiler: Rosh Hashanah, that’s right. It was September.
Lillian Feiler: When you got back, you told me, I said, “What happened to you?” You didn’t even know what was happening. You know, it was so secret, when you’re on alert, what’s the word they call.
Sam Feiler: You’re restricted.
Lillian Feiler: You’re very restricted.
Sam Feiler: Restricted.
Lillian Feiler: You called it another word, I remember. All the men were ready to go but they didn’t know…
Maurice Tydor: On alert.
Lillian Feiler: They were on alert, ready to go somewhere. They didn’t know where or when until the very last second.
Sam Feiler: That’s right.
Maurice Tydor: I think there were a couple that were called off that we even went to the airport, and Patton’s tanks were already there. So then we came back and we were in England a while and then we went to Holland on Rosh Hashanah.
Sam Feiler: September 15th.
Lillian Feiler: You told me when you got back, a guy said to you, “Where you been, Shifty?” And you said, “What’s going on here?” You didn’t know what was going on, on alert. He was thinking, he was trying to get through to me, and he couldn’t get through to me; he was going crazy, he didn’t know how to tell me what was happening. So I Said, oh-oh, he thinks he got married to ditch me, well, that was it.
Sam Feiler: I wouldn’t have…
Lillian Feiler: In the meantime, I [didn’t hear] from him until about a week later. Anyway, then they…
Sam Feiler: Did you get a letter from me?
Lillian Feiler: I guess I got a call, or a letter. I think I got a letter.
Sam Feiler: Yeah, I …
Aaron Elson: So here, you just got married, was this the jump into Holland?
Sam Feiler: Yes.
Maurice Tydor: In other words he got married after Normandy and before Holland. We went back, after Normandy, we went back to England, and we stayed there. That was a staging area for other operations in Europe. One of them is supposed to have been one that didn’t happen, but then we were still in England. In fact, the first thing when we got into England, everyone was given a furlough, right?
Sam Feiler: Yeah.
Maurice Tydor: You could have a week wherever you wanted. Where did you go?
Sam Feiler: I must have gone to London.
Maurice Tydor: I went to Edinboro.
Lillian Feiler: That was the situation, we finally caught up. He wrote to me and explained what happened.
Aaron Elson: What did you think? Were you upset?
Lillian Feiler: I wasn’t sure. I get married and I don’t hear from someone, it’s very strange. And yet…
Maurice Tydor: It was uncertain times.
Lillian Feiler: I’d come through it and I wasn’t sure if I did the right thing or I didn’t do the right thing, so I sort of had mixed feelings, you know what I mean? Everything was so quick.
Maurice Tydor: After all those years, you’re not sorry now, are you?
Lillian Feiler: Oh, not now. But I had mixed feelings at the time.
Lillian Feiler passed away in 2023 at the age of 100. Samuel Charles Feiler died in 1995. He was 88 years old.
If you find the audio helpful, please let me know with a comment. The text has been lightly edited.