Alan Seman, local politician and veteran of World War II, participated in the battle of the bulge and the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp at Dachau near Munich, Germany. In this photograph taken at his home om Rancho Mirage, Seman holds a sword that belonged to a Nazi officer. / Omar Ornelas, The Desert Sun
Prisoners at the concentration camp in Dachau cheered, hugged and kissed men of the 222nd Infantry Regiment — including Seman — who freed them. / Courtesy of Alan Seman
Alan Seman
AGE: 84.
HOMETOWN: Rancho Mirage.
MILITARY: U.S. Army, 42nd Infantry Division, 1943-1946. Served during the Battle of the Bulge; liberated Dachau concentration camp with 42nd Infantry Division, Rainbow Company.
RANK: Corporal, T-5.
MEDALS: Bronze star
FAMILY: Wife: Jeanette
Alan Seman's Bronze Star and war campaign ribbons. / Courtesy of Alan Seman
Soldiers carried this card containing prayers for various faiths.
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I was 18 years old, right out of high school, one step ahead of the government,” said Alan Seman, now a Rancho Mirage councilman. “I volunteered to be in the Army.”
Before he knew it, the then-Great Neck, N.Y., teen was on his way to Muskogee, Okla., for basic training — with 15,000 other soon-to-be-soldiers assigned to the 42nd Infantry Division.
“It was the shock of my life,” he said. “They trained us to be in the infantry, and they sent us over for the invasion of France.”
Seman, now 84, and his comrades were shipped to Marseilles, France.
Once on foreign soil, a sergeant's remarks to the troops foreshadowed the grim realities of war.
“He said, ‘Look at the guy on the left; look at the guy on the right,'” said Seman. “‘They're going to be dead soon.'”
The sergeant's words proved prophetic.
“In a company of 100, maybe 11 of us came back,” Seman said.
Seman was cold from the day he set foot in France until the day he left Europe a year later.
The men bundled up as best they could in their bedrolls.
“Your feet would freeze up. You're laying in the woods; it's as cold as can be,” Seman said.
“The clothing we had was inadequate,” he said. “The United States could have done better.”
He was issued only about two or three pairs of underwear during his year on the European battlefields.
“I'd write my mother, ‘Send me some underwear,' and some six months later, the underwear showed up,” Seman said.
Battle was just that — a constant battle
It was nearly impossible to sleep. German soldiers were stationed near the Americans' camp, so a visit to the bathroom in the middle of the night was out of the question.
Any little noise would alert the enemy as to the infantry's exact position.
“We used to have a little can,” near their bedroll, he said. “We peed into the can.”
Every night, a German plane, nicknamed “Bed-check Charlie,” flew above the area where the Germans thought the Americans slept.
The constant roar of the engines prevented the men from getting a decent night's sleep.
In the woods, the infantrymen were assigned two-hour guard duty shifts.
While out on a 2 a.m. assignment, Seman ran into the enemy.
“I heard some noise in a ditch,” he said. “It was a lot of German soldiers with rifles.”
There were 13 soldiers in the ditch.
“I fired at the first two,” he said. They died and he captured the rest.
Seman later received a bronze star for his actions that night.
The experience was frightening, he said.
“At 2 o'clock in the morning, in the dark, it's scary,” he said.
It looked like a ‘bad movie'
Seman fought in the Battle of the Bulge, a major German offensive that penetrated the front line of the Allied forces, creating a “bulge.” It took a terrible toll on American resources.
The infantry was short on ammunition.
Replacements for dead, dying and injured soldiers — recently recruited and ill-prepared for battle — were thrust into the front lines void of adequate training.
These Repo Depo commandos — named for the replacement depot where new soldiers were mustered and sent off to the front — were more of a liability.
“They'd stick them in our outfit and they'd last a week or two” before they were killed, Seman said.
The 42nd Infantry Division, having made its way into Germany, was assigned to take over a prison camp in late April 1945.
“The instruction that day was to go after a camp in Munich,” Seman said.
The soldiers, unaware they were headed to a Nazi death camp, arrived at Dachau on April 29, 1945.
The camp looked like a “bad movie,” he said.
“There were a lot of of Nazi guards there. It was a fire fight.”
The Americans found about 32,000 prisoners, crammed 1,600 to each of 20 barracks, which had been designed to house 250 people each, according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Web site.
“There were thousands and thousands of dead it was the worst thing I ever saw in my life.”
