Semple attended the Brooks School in North Andover, Massachusetts, graduating in 1940. He then attended Yale University, but left in 1941 to join the American Field Service in North Africa, where his boyish beard earned him the nickname "the goat". Aged 19, he was awarded the Médaille militaire and Croix de Guerre for his service as a volunteer ambulance driver with the Free French forces in Libya. Wounded in action at Bir Hakeim, he returned to the United States where he was drafted into the army, serving as an intelligence officer in Europe. His time training at Camp Ritchie's Military Intelligence Training Center puts him among the ranks of nearly 20,000 Ritchie Boys.
Semple's writing career started in 1951, as a short story contributor to magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post and Collier's Weekly. Semple also tried writing for the theatre and had a play produced on Broadway, Tonight in Samarkand (1955), a melodrama adapted from the French.
He wrote an episode for The Alcoa Hour called "Archangel Harrison" (1955).

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