Sewickley Veteran Recalls WWII

Andy Seman is a World War II veteran who lives in Sewickley. His U.S. Navy outfit had more than 1,400 people  in the early 1940s. At their last reunion, there were only 12 left.  

Now 87 years old, Seman has something to say, and the book he's written about his wartime experiences will hit bookstore shelves in the coming weeks.

The book is called “Passage Through History, 2 Ships, 2 Theaters, 1 Man – A Personal History of WWII.”  Like many members of what Tom Brokaw described as the “Greatest Generation,” Seman is stoic about his service.  He survived the terror of combat, but doesn’t dwell on it, choosing to dwell on all the girlfriends he had in his home port in Boston.

“There were quite a few of ‘em,” Seman said.

He served in both the Pacific and Atlantic. One of his oddest memories is taking on the French Navy. By his account, when the French surrendered to Hitler, the Fuehrer commandeered the French Navy and ordered them to fight the Americans.

“In 3 ½ hours we took ‘em out,” Seman said. 

Some soldiers are forever impacted by the horrors of war.  My father, Ed McIntire, served in the Army. He was in the second wave at Normandy, shortly after D-Day. He helped liberate concentration camps. When I covered the Oklahoma City Bombing as a television news reporter, my dad wrote me a letter suggesting I had experienced what he had, seeing emaciated and/or dead bodies at the camps.

"No," I had to explain to my Dad, "I only saw the tortured faces of the firefighters who had been recovering bodies inside the Murrah Federal Building."

But clearly these memories had a lifelong negative impact on my father.

That’s what struck me about Andy Seman. He was in Hiroshima and Nagasaki just a few days after the Americans destroyed both cities with nuclear weapons. He saw skin hanging off bodies, buildings and entire forests leveled, frightened humans who’d been without food and water for days after miraculously surviving a nuclear blast.

“'Course the coal miners survived ‘cause they were underground,” Seman explained.

Was he haunted by these memories?

“Nothing bothers me,” he said.

Do you have nightmares?

“Nothing, nothing,” he repeated.

As for today’s military, Seman is proud that women now serve alongside men.

“Women are going to war too. Well, if they wanna go and fight they’re welcome. They can shoot just like I could,” Seman said. 

He believes the United State should not have gone to war in Iraq and that the argument for war was proven to be a sham when no weapons of mass destruction were found.

In his book, Seman addresses his experiences in more detail --  from the memories of Hiroshima to the girls. At 87, Andy Seman prefers to dwell on his experiences with the women of war. Maybe that’s how he deals with it all.

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