John J. Keefe

photo courtesy of John Keefe	photo by Thais Boise
This is one of John Keefe's last remaining photographs of his Marine days. Most of his pictures were lost during years of moving.	“Call it confidence of youth,” Keefe said of his experience in Korea. “I was sure whatever would come my way I would handle.”

Making it though
with presence of mind

by Brenna Rice
Veterans History Project

While he served during the Korean War, John Keefe often took the trail leading from his platoon’s position along the Imjin River to the company’s position. An abandoned rice paddy sat in a draw between the two.

One night, Keefe had just left a meeting at company and was moving back to the platoon. It was about 10 p.m.

He carried a standard-issue carbine rifle with one round loaded in the chamber. A full magazine of ammunition was also loaded and the rifle was on safe, a precaution he always took while walking in the Korean night.

He was just starting up the hill next to the rice paddy edge. Suddenly, a whirring sound came from under his feet. Seconds became minutes.

photo by Thais Boise

Thinking he had just walked into a Chinese trap, Keefe went to turn off the safety on his rifle. But instead of switching the safety, he pressed the magazine release button, right next to it. Keefe’s full magazine dropped to the dark ground, lost.
All Keefe could hear were the whirring and his beating heart.

But no other sounds came from the black night.

“I realized that it was really a pheasant,” Keefe said. “But I was so mad at myself for pressing the wrong button.”

Moments of fear like this during the Korean War were rare for the 20-year-old lieutenant. But when they did come, they were strong. Keefe couldn’t dwell on fear; he was there to lead his platoon of 60 infantrymen.

“Call it confidence of youth,” Keefe said. “I was sure whatever would come my way I would handle.”

Keefe enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1949, hoping to bring some honor back to himself and his family after a poor semester at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Wash. A friend of his, a World War II veteran, convinced Keefe he needed to grow up and the Marine Corps would do just that.

“And I believed him,” Keefe said.

Keefe went to Marine recruit training in San Diego. By the time he left, the number of Marine Corps troops had swelled because of the new war in Korea, but there weren’t enough officers to lead them.

Keefe was chosen to go to Marine Officer Candidate School in Quantico, Va., a much tougher physical challenge that included demanding forced marches.

“The Marine Corps believes, and still does to this day, there is a direct relationship between physical and moral courage,” he said. “If we had the physical courage to survive these long, fast marches in the rain… we would come through OK emotionally.”

Half of Keefe’s officer candidate class dropped out. Keefe made it through, then went to Marine Officer Basic School and an armor school at Fort Knox, Ky., for training in tanks, which would become his specialty.

Soon after, Keefe was on a ship bound for Korea, where war had been going on for nearly a year. He was young for a lieutenant, just 20. Keefe had no experience leading troops in real Marine life, just what he learned in four schools.

By the time he arrived in Korea, the war was at a stalemate. Negotiation talks had begun, but that didn’t mean Keefe’s unit was safe. They still had to watch the Chinese across the Imjin River.

Where his unit was located along the Imjin was part of an infiltration line. The Chinese didn’t want to take over the area the Americans held; they just wanted to move on through.

The two enemies often exchanged gunfire. On their side of the river, the Chinese often gathered for lectures, Keefe said. One time, someone spotted around 200 Chinese on a side of a hill.

“It was one of those, ‘Lieutenant, you’re not going to believe this,’ kind of things,” he said.

photo by Thais Boise

The group of Chinese could be seen only from one spot on the U.S. side. Keefe had his men move the machine guns there and aimed them at the men on the hill.

He called for artillery support, timed so his men would know when to open fire. The artillery rounds dropped with large explosions; the Marines opened fire.

“By the time the dust cleared, we had gotten a whole bunch,” Keefe said. “They didn’t do that again, by the way. At least not those guys.”

Back, in the states, Keefe’s wife had given birth to their first child, a son named Shawn. Keefe wouldn’t find out for three weeks because of mail delays. This didn’t bother him; every other man in Korea was going through the same thing.
“It’s accepted and it’s normal,” he said.

Thinking about his new family back home wasn’t easy because he had to concentrate on his new family in Korea. The Chinese were still shooting at Keefe’s unit and the wear of combat was showing.

“We didn’t call it ‘stress’ in those days,” Keefe said. “We called it ‘presence of mind.’”

“Presence of mind” was the ability to work effectively in hazardous or stressful conditions, he said. Almost everyone in the Marine Corps wanted to be tested for presence of mind.

“It was a prized military virtue,” he said.

Keefe said his unit was lucky and had few casualties throughout the war. Still, some were killed or badly injured.

“Guys that you know are animated and alive and the next minute, they’re gone,” he said.

When someone was killed, he said, you only wanted to remember the good things about the man and then you thought about what a waste of a life it was. “Then you have to get on with your job again,” he said.

After leaving Korea, Keefe continued his military career in Vietnam and spent most of his time in combat units, teaching or recruiting. He went back to Korea as a senior adviser to the Korean Marines, 22 years after he left the first time.

He was shocked by the changes in the country. It was no longer a farming area; Seoul was a large city with skyscrapers.

Korean War veterans “can be very proud of what they accomplished in helping the Korean people,” Keefe said.

photo by Thais Boise

Three of Keefe's sons have followed in their father's military footsteps. Keefe's fourth and youngest, would like to attend the U.S. Naval Academy.

Three more sons were born in the years after Korea. Shawn, a Marine lieutenant colonel, is now in Dallas. Timothy is a major in the Marine Corps stationed in Germany. Brian is an airman first class with the National Security Agency at Fort Meade, Md. Mike is a 15-year-old freshman at Sentinel High School in Missoula, Mont., who would like to follow his two oldest brothers to the Naval Academy.

Keefe left the Marines in 1977 as a colonel. He continues to be active in youth activities, from coaching to Boy Scouts. He thinks it is because he had grown so used to working with young men in the Marine Corps.

“I can’t think of myself as 73 and a half years old,” Keefe said. “I always think of myself as 27.”

Keefe's after-military life was one of ups and downs. In 1981 he divorced his wife of over 30 years. He went back to school and received his master’s in land use and found work in Jackson County, Ore., where he served as a county commissioner. Later, he got a real estate license and moved to Seattle.

In Seattle, he met a geneticist at the University of Washington. The two married in 1997. Two years later, the family moved to Missoula.They plan to stay for a while. They only other place the Keefes would move would be Alaska, he said.

Keefe is a member of every veterans group or society in Missoula.

“There is kind of a need to associate with those kind of guys,” he said. “Maybe they weren’t in your service, but they had very similar experiences.”

When he enlisted in 1949, Keefe never thought he would become an officer, let alone make the military a career.

If the war hadn’t started and he wasn’t chosen for Officer Candidate School, he said, he would have left after his four-year enlistment and gone back to school, probably for dentistry. But he doesn’t regret his 28-year career in the Marines.

“There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about the Marine Corps and experiences and friends,” he said. “You make your own luck. And I’ve been very lucky.”

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