Valor Friday

Would you believe that there was a man who served in the Nazi German Waffen SS as an officer that later went on to serve in the US Army? No just serve, he was commissioned an officer. Perhaps even more incredible, he would join the elite Green Berets and fight in Vietnam. All of this was after he’d served in his native Finland’s Army. To say the life and exploits of Larry Thorne are unbelievable is to put it mildly.

Thorne was born Lauri Allan Törni in Finland in 1919. His father a ship captain, Törni had two younger sisters. An athletic boy, he joined the White Guard (the Finnish civil militia) and then in 1938 joined the regular Army. His enlistment was extended in 1939 when the Soviets invaded, starting the Winter War (part of World War II).

Seeing success in combat against his communist enemies, Törni was selected in 1940 for officer training, subsequently commissioned a lieutenant. The wars had made strange bedfellows, as the Nazis and Finnish hated the communist Soviets. As a result of this, Törni’s officer training was conducted by the Waffen-SS in Vienna.

During the anti-communist Continuation War in Finland (fought by Finnish partisans with and alongside Nazi German forces against the Soviets) from 1941 to 1944 Törni saw great military success in conducting commando-style operations.

Törni was so successful that he even received command of a new formation. Known as “Detachment Törni”, they penetrated deep behind enemy lines, earning a reputation on both sides of the fight. The Soviets had such a distaste for the man that they offered a three million Finnish mark bounty on his head. This translates roughly to about three-quarters of a million in today’s US dollars.

During the Continuation War, Törni rose to the rank of captain and earned the Mannerheim Cross. The Mannerheim Cross was Finland’s highest award for combat bravery during World War II. Only awarded during that war, only 197 awards were made to 191 recipients. Törni also received the German Iron Cross 2nd Class.

In September 1944 the Moscow Armistice between Finland and the Soviet Union required the Finnish government to remove the German Army from their territory and demobilize most of their army, including Törni.

In January 1945 Törni was recruited by a German-aligned resistance group. Travelling to Germany for saboteur training, the war had other plans. His training was cut short in March as the Allies encircled Germany. He was also left with no transport back home. What’s a communist-hating soldier to do? Why, enlist with the Germans of course!

As a captain with the Waffen-SS, Törni fought with the Germans against the Soviets at Schwerin, Germany. The war for Germany ended just weeks later, and Törni surrendered to the British to avoid falling into Soviet hands.

In June 1945, Törni escaped the British POW camp and returned to Finland. On arrival there, he was placed under arrest for having joined the Wehrmacht. He escaped and was arrested a second time shortly thereafter.

Törni was tried for treason, convicted, and sent to prison for six years. Escaping his first prison, he was recaptured and sent to a tougher prison. He was given a presidential pardon in 1948 after serving nearly two years of his sentence.

Törni left Finland, travelling to Sweden where he was sheltered with other former Finnish officers. He made his way to Venezuela, where he met with other exiled Finns. He hired onto a Swedish ship headed to the United States. While in the Gulf of Mexico, he literally jumped ship and swam to shore near Mobile, Alabama.

Considered a political refugee, Törni found his way to New York City where he worked as a carpenter in the Finnish-American community. In 1953 an act of Congress gave him a residence permit. In 1954, Törni enlisted in the US Army under the Lodge-Philbin Act. He enlisted and lived the rest of his life under the name Larry Alan Thorne, an Americanization of his birth name.

The Lodge-Philbin Act allowed the US military to recruit foreign nationals (specifically eastern Europeans) to combat the Soviet Union. While enacted for nearly a decade, only a couple of hundred men partook of the program, since the Eisenhower Administration didn’t want to actively recruit overseas. After serving for five years, those enlisted under Lodge-Philbin would receive American citizenship.

Once in the Army Thorne was befriended by some Finnish-American Army officers who encouraged him to join the nascent Army Special Forces. Once earning his Green Beret, he taught survival training, skiing, and guerrilla tactics. Rising to the rank of sergeant, he was again selected for officer training. He was sent to officer candidate school shortly after getting his American citizenship in 1957.

Promoted to captain in 1960, Thorne served in Germany with the 10th Special Forces Group from 1958 until 1962. From 1963, Thorne was in South Vietnam serving with Special Forces Detachment A-734, which were supporting South Vietnamese military operations. Once again, for the third time in his life he was fighting against communism.

During a fierce battle at Tinh Biên, Thorne and all of his men were wounded. Present with Thorne and the other Special Forces soldiers was author Robin Moore. Moore, a civilian, had gone through a year’s worth of Special Forces training to be embedded with the soldiers in Vietnam for the purposes of writing a book on them.

During the battle, the highly experienced Thorne directed his men to mine their own machine gun positions. This unique strategy helped hold off the vastly numerically superior enemy. Thorne knew that his positions would eventually be overrun and the mines took out many enemy men when that happened.

The book Moore wrote was The Green Berets. The story in the book is presented as fiction, but that’s only because the battle at Tinh Biên was considered classified. The book’s character Captain Steve Kornie is based on Thorne.

In the 1968 movie adaptation, the character of Captain Kornie was rewritten for John Wayne and made a colonel (mostly due to Wayne’s age). The real-life Thorne has been called “John Wayne-esque” for his life of incredible exploits.

In 1965, Thorne started his second tour in Vietnam. He was assigned to the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam – Studies and Observations Group (MACV-SOG), the classified special operations unit advising South Vietnamese military and militia forces on fighting the North Vietnamese and Viet-Cong.

On 18 October 1965 Thorne was in a South Vietnamese Air Force CH-34 that launched from Kham Duc Special Forces Camp with a second CH-43. Thorne was in command of the operation, which was to find Viet-Cong turnaround points along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. His Special Forces team was in the other CH-34 helicopter. While enroute to the their objective, the two helicopters met up with a US Army O-1 Bird Dog forward air control aircraft.

At their objective, 25 miles from Da Nang, inclimate weather prevented them from seeing the ground. Thorne’s command helicopter and the Bird Dog remained to loiter over the landing zone while the other CH-34 inserted its team.

When the CH-34 returned above the clouds, both Thorne’s helicopter and the Bird Dog observation plane were nowhere to be found. Rescue crews were dispatched, but the crash sites were never found. They were eventually discovered in 1999, with the remains of Thorne and the three South Vietnamese Air Force men were repatriated to the United States. Positively identified in 2003, the four men were laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery.

At the time of his death Thorne was survived only by his fiance. She had later married but was present at his interment.

While in the United States Army, Thorne earned a posthumous Legion of Merit, a posthumous Distinguished Flying Cross, a Bronze Star w/ “V” for valor, and two Purple Hearts. Shortly after his disappearance he was promoted to major.

Thorne had risen from the ranks of conscript in the Finnish militia to captain, served as an officer in the Third Reich for a time, and then became an American Green Beret, rising there once again from the rank of private to major.

Category: Army, Historical, Real Soldiers, Valor, Vietnam, We Remember