Marshall De Bruhl: Military Historian

A man with a soft Southern accent and an impish laugh, Marshall De Bruhl does not have the imperious froideur one might expect from a military historian and compiler of dictionaries, encyclopedias, and thesauri.

As he settled a visitor in the exotic little greenhouse attached to his house overlooking Three Mile Harbor, a frog waterspout gurgled into a small indoor pool. A fire crackled cheerily in the living room beyond.

Mr. De Bruhl, the author of "Sword of San Jacinto: A Life of Sam Houston" (Random House, 1993), now completing a book due out next year on the firebombing of Dresden in 1945, speculated about his passion for reference books, biographies, and histories.

Too Truthful For Fiction

Born in Asheville, N.C., made famous by Thomas Wolfe as Altamont in "Look Homeward Angel," he was encouraged to write by his high school English teacher, Wolfe's first cousin Mary Louise Wolfe, whose copies of her cousin Tom's books are still in his possession.

"She probably hoped I would write novels, but after reading everything I could get my hands about the world, I think I became too educated to write fiction," said Mr. De Bruhl.

"I was too truthful to invent things the way my dad and my eight older brothers and sisters did. They'd come out with these colorful Southernisms - heaven knows where they got them - 'He's older than water.' 'She has enough money to burn a wet mule.' "

He laughed heartily. "They could turn a phrase and spin a yarn, but they couldn't write descriptions like I can."

After attending public schools in Asheville, Mr. De Bruhl went on to Duke University, graduating with a B.A. in psychology in 1958.

"It's an interesting field, but I knew I didn't actually want to be a psychologist when I realized there was not one person in the department I'd like to see socially."

As an alternative to the draft, then in effect, he enlisted in Naval Officers Candidate School in Newport, R.I., and was commissioned an ensign in 1959.

The next four years, served mainly in Morocco, were invaluable, he said.

"They expanded my horizons, and having responsibility for people's lives and well-being helped me enormously later on in my work."

He Knew The Difference

After being discharged in 1962, Mr. De Bruhl moved to Manhattan and began a career in book publishing as a copy editor at the University of Pennsylvania Press.

Two years later, he spotted an ad in The New York Times: "If you know the difference between 'comprise' and 'constitute,' call this number."

He knew. He called, and landed a job at Crowell-Collier-Macmillan.

A 1967 move to Charles Scribner's Sons led to a directorship in the reference book division and a senior vice-presidency of the company.

Becoming something of a walking reference library himself, Mr. De Bruhl edited encyclopedias of philosophy, the social sciences, scientific biography, American biography, American history, American writers, British writers, ancient writers, Asian history, the Middle Ages, and the history of ideas - definitely the sort who would win the Volvo, the Cancun vacation, and all the available cash on "Jeopardy."

Not reflected in the list is his passion for opera. Among the authors he worked with at Scribner's were James Levine, artistic director of the Metropolitan Opera, and the great, controversial German soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. "Stern and difficult, but fun to be with," Mr. De Bruhl said of Ms. Schwarzkopf, one of many performers who were forced to join the Nazi Party in order to pursue careers in Germany. Now living in Switzerland, she is still a good friend.

A Fortune Cookie

In 1986 Mr. De Bruhl moved to Doubleday as executive editor and editorial director of Anchor Books, responsible for publishing both hardcover originals and paperback reprints of works by John Barth, Donald Hall, and Ada Louise Huxtable, among many others.

Publishing was gradually robbed of its genteel traditions and relative job security as foreign investors began acquiring American houses in the go-go '80s. Entire staffs would suddenly be fired en masse, mostly by marauding German conglomerates.

While Mr. De Bruhl was not exactly whistling Dixie during those shaky times, he remembers his elation upon opening a fortune cookie after an uproarious dinner in a Chinese restaurant with the lively Ms. Huxtable. "You will receive a promotion soon," the message read.

When she called at work the next day to thank him for the evening and congratulate him on his auspicious cookie, he had to tell her he'd just been fired.

A New Life

Thus, in 1989, Mr. De Bruhl began a new life as a free-lance writer, editor, and editorial consultant.

"I'd always wanted to write a biography of Sam Houston, an authentic American hero," he said. "His victory at the Battle of San Jacinto not only freed Texas from Mexico but added all or part of 14 new states to the United States, basically our West today."

What really drew him to his subject, however, was Houston's abhorrence of slavery. As a Senator, he voted against extending slavery into Kansas and Nebraska, thus losing his Senate seat. Then later, as Governor of Texas, he declined to take the Oath of the Confederacy, a move that cost him the Governor's chair as well.

"He took the high road," said Mr. De Bruhl. "I don't even know if there is a high road any more."

Raid On Dresden

Similar ethical considerations inspired him to write about Dresden, Mr. De Bruhl said.

After viewing bombed-out Coventry as a tourist in 1965 he decided to visit Dresden, the site of a devastating Allied raid in 1945 that stunned the world. The event became so controversial that Winston Churchill glossed over it in one sentence in his otherwise exacting memoirs.

The only existing account of the bombardment had been written by David Irving, an admired British military historian now in bad repute for a book critics say denies the Holocaust and for a biography of Goebbels that has been canceled by his American publisher.

All Night, All Day

Mr. De Bruhl seized the opportunity to set the record straight, or at the very least, to set it down.

The raid took place on Ash Wednesday, also St. Valentine's Day Eve that year - Feb. 13. It started at 10:30 p.m., wave after wave of British bombers pounding Dresden all night.

At dawn American B-17s, B-24s, and B-25s took over, pulverizing the city by day. In all, 1,200 planes participated in the most devastating air raid to date, creating a firestorm estimated by some as equal in intensity and in civilian deaths to the bombing of Hiroshima.

"When the brass called for an air strike it generally meant women and children would be killed, and the terminology of choice was quite chilling," said Mr. De Bruhl.

"Dehouse"

"Take the expression, 'collateral damage,' indicating the destruction of schools, orphanages, and the like. Or the neologism 'dehouse,' meaning to render homeless and used in sentences like, 'It's better to downsize than dehouse a civilian population.' "

"And there really was no accuracy," he went on. "A bombing mission was considered successful if it came within 3,000 feet of the target, which means that if you were aiming at the New York Public Library and you hit Bloomingdale's, you'd done a great job."

Mr. De Bruhl, who lectures and teaches at universities in the South and also has a house in Asheville, actually got to fly a B-17 himself last summer, at a fund-raiser for an airplane museum.

A Tar Baby

"A crew of six of us wore bomber jackets and took turns flying the plane. There actually were papier-mach‚, bombs aboard in bomb racks, and I flew over the house where I was born. I could have bombed my own home!" he said with a laugh.

Although his editor, Bob Loomis, who lives in Sag Harbor, is impatiently waiting for the Dresden book, Mr. De Bruhl will be leaving shortly for London to do more interviews with former R.A.F. pilots.

"That book's gotten to be just like a tar baby," the Tarheel said. "I stick to the darn thing - I can't seem to put it down."