Studiegroep Luchtoorlog 1939-1945

						2/Lt. James H. Keeffe was the co-pilot of B-24 Liberator 42-100375 on a bombing mission to Berlin on May 8, 1944. On the return leg, with two engines out of action by flak, the B-24 was attacked by Fw-190 fighters. One of the gunners was killed and the other crewmembers were forced to bail out over the Dutch village of Papendrecht. After their landing, all crewmembers were arrested by the Germans except for Keeffe. He unbuckled his parachute and quickly hid in a Dutchman's rabbit hutch while the Germans were searching the area. When Johannes Korteland, the owner of the hutch, entered in the evening to feed the rabbits, the airman accosted him. Korteland made it clear to Keeffe to wait for half an hour while he figured out what to do. He decided to inform his GP, Dr. Rietveld, and was told to keep quiet and all would be all right. Rietveld was head of the local resistance and this group was part of the so-called LO, the ‘Landelijke Organisatie voor hulp aan onderduikers’ (National Organisation for help to Persons in hiding). He called on some members of the group, and later that same evening, they collected Keeffe from the hutch and brought him first to a safe house in Dordrecht. Two days later, he moved to Rotterdam where he remained for the nearly five months evading from the Germans. Keeffe was given false identification papers by the resistance allowing him to travel freely right under the noses of the Germans as a young 'Dutchman'. During those five months Keeffe was invited to stay with several Dutch families in Rotterdam. One of the safe houses where he hid was the home of Dr. Jappe Alberts and his wife at Eendrachtsweg 33a.

The Alberts family also provided shelter to a Jewish family of four in the attic of their home. This family, the Cohens, had been hiding here already for two years by the time Keeffe came into the Alberts’ home. The Cohens would come downstairs three times a day to have meals with the Alberts and then go back to the attic. Mrs. Alberts was able to obtain enough stolen ration cards to feed not only her family but also the Cohens and James Keeffe. The members of the LO who helped him were Marinus Veth who died as a prisoner of the Germans and Johannes Verdoorn, Willem Verdoorn, Adriaan van Wijngaarden and Dr. Rietveld who all survived. During Keeffe’s stay in Rotterdam, the resistance several times tried to get him out of the Netherlands and back to England but all to no avail. Finally, after the Normandy Invasion had taken place on June 6, he was taken to Breda and put on an escape route into Belgium. Unfortunately, it was a false escape line set up by the German military-intelligence service, the Abwehr. All downed Allied airmen who ended up using this escape line were captured in Antwerp - almost 250 total – Keeffe being one of them. He was captured on July 26, 1944 and spent several days at the Antwerp Army War Prison at the Begijnenstraat. From there, Keeffe and other captured airmen were transported  to the German interrogation center Dulag Luft at Oberürsel, and then on 15 August from there to Stalag Luft III. On 27 January 1945 evacuation orders came for all the PoWs. After a gruesome march on feet in bitter cold conditions and transportation in boxcars for days, they arrived at Stalag VIIA Moosburg on February 7, 1945. The camp was liberated on April 29, by the U.S. 14th armored Division, commanded by Brigadier General Charles Karlstad. On May 1st. General Patton visited the camp. 
 
Back in the Netherlands, on the 5th of December 1944, months after Keeffe was captured, the Gestapo stormed into the Alberts' home on Eendrachtsweg. The Cohen family was taken north to Westerbork concentration camp to await transport to death camps in Germany.  Luckily, they all survived the war. Dr. Alberts and his wife and family were taken to the Oranjehotel prison at Scheveningen.  On 14 February 1945, an order was sent to the prison to pull out ten prisoners to be shot in reprisal for the killing of a Dutch Nazi farmer by the resistance. Dr. Alberts was one of those ten; nine men and a ten-year-old boy. They were forced on to a truck and transferred under armed guard to the outskirts of the small town of Heinenoord where they were murdered in cold blood. A monument, known as the 'Moeder Monument', now sits at the edge of a country road (N217) near Heinenoord in memory of the ten who were murdered there in the ultimate months of the war. 

After the war, Keeffe went on to a full career in the United States Air Force (USAF). He was stationed at Guam and in Japan during the Korean War where he flew combat and reconnaissance missions in B-29 and RB-50 airplanes. He retired from the USAF in 1967 at the rank of Lieutenant Colonel with over 4,000 hours flying time in military aircraft. 

James Keeffe passed away on May 26, 2015 at the age of 92 in Bellevue, WA and is buried at the Tahoma National Cemetery near Kent, WA.