Rockwall, TX (October 9, 2023) – This is an abbreviated repeat of an article I wrote in 2008.
When assigned to the 10th Special Forces in Bad Tolz, Germany in 1961-1964, I served with some very interesting Soldiers.
One of the most illustrious was a fellow officer by the name of Larry Thorne.
Larry was a Finn who entered the Finnish Army in 1938 at the age of 19. War broke out between Finland and the Soviet Union in 1939 and for the next six years he fought the Russian Army, first as an officer in the Finnish Army, and then as an officer in the German SS after Finland surrendered to the Soviets in 1944.
While in the Finnish Army he became famous in the period of 1941-1944 when a unit was created under him to penetrate and fight deep behind enemy lines. His unit became so good and so famous the Russians put an unheard of $650,000 bounty on his head. Leading his unit, he received the highest Finnish medal, their Medal of Honor, for his activities behind enemy lines.
When the Finns and the Russians signed their peace treaty, Thorne was dissatisfied with the terms, so he went to Germany where he joined the German SS to continue his fight against Russians. In the last stages of the war, he surrendered to the British and eventually returned to Finland after escaping a British POW camp.
When he returned, he was then arrested by the Finns, even though he had received their Medal of Honor, and was sentenced to 6 years in prison for treason. He was then pardoned by the Finnish government in December of 1948.
Escaping from Finland after his pardon, he went to Sweden where he fell in love with a Swedish-Finn. He hoped to establish a career before he was married so he disguised himself as a seaman and got on a ship headed for Venezuela. Arriving there, he then got on a ship headed for the United States. When it got near Mobile, Alabama, in the Gulf of Mexico, he jumped off the ship and swam to shore.
He made it to New York where there was a strong Finnish community and was successful in getting a job as a carpenter. In 1953 he was granted a “permit of residency” through an Act of Congress that was sponsored by “Wild Bill” Donovan, the former head of the OSS group during World War II.
In 1954 he joined the US Army as a Private under the provisions of the Lodge Act. And as you would expect, he soon ended up in the US Special Warfare School where he taught survival, skiing, mountaineering, and guerrilla tactics. He also learned parachuting and was soon an expert in that area.
Rising through the ranks quickly, he was commissioned as a Lieutenant in 1957 and then promoted to Captain in 1960. From 1958-1962 he was in the 10th Special Forces Group and that is where I got to know him.
In 1962, as a Captain, he led his Special Forces team onto the highest mountain in Iran to recover the bodies from an American C-130 airplane that had crashed, and to recover classified material on the plane. While others had failed before, Thorne and his team did what they had set out to do!
In 1963 he was assigned to Vietnam where he earned the Bronze Star medal for valor and five Purple Hearts for wounds. Here most of his combat was from isolated outposts on tops of hills where Special Forces camps were established.
On his second tour of duty in Vietnam in 1965, the helicopter he was riding in crashed. He was declared missing and then dead in 1966 even though the body had not been recovered.
In 1999 a recovery team made it to the site of the helicopter crash and recovered the bodies of Major Thorne and the other passengers. In 2003 he was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
He was the only American POW/MIA to fight communism under three flags: Finland, Germany, and America.
Today in Finland he is remembered as a hero and at Fort Carson, Colorado, the main headquarters building of the current location of the 10th Special Forces Group, is named Thorne Hall.
As the story goes, in the movie “Green Berets”, the part played by John Wayne, Captain Sven Kornie, was based in large part on Larry Thorne.
Larry was just one example of Lodge Act Soldiers who served in Special Forces following World War II.
And my own personal observation, “They were great Soldiers who loved to soldier”!!!
Jerry Hogan is a former Rockwall County Judge and retired US Army Lieutenant Colonel who volunteers to write these weekly articles. He can be reached at jerryhogan@sbcglobal.net or 214-394-4033.
A Broad View by Jerry Hogan: A Soldier Who Fought Communism Under Three Flags added by Melanie M on
View all posts by Melanie M →