The Legend of Larry Thorne
One of the great things about serving in elite units in the Army is that you often get to walk in the footsteps of legendary warriors. In a way, I suppose it might be like playing for a prestigious ball team with a history of all-star players. My old SF battalion was just such a unit and to me its most inspiring former member is Captain Larry Thorne.
Often called “The Man Who Fought for Three Flags,” Larry was born in Finland in 1919 as Lauri Allan Törni. As a young man he fought the Soviets in the early part of the Second World War and was later sent to Germany to train with the Waffen SS where he became an infantry officer. He spent the rest of the war continuing to fight the Soviets in Finland and his exploits as the leader of a detachment of guerrilla fighters behind enemy lines made him famous on both sides of the conflict.
As the war came to an end, Thorne escaped a British POW camp and returned to Finland where he ended up in jail for a few years before being pardoned. This is where his life took a dramatic turn. After escaping to Sweden a year later, Thorne came to America and joined the Army under the the Lodge Act; switching his name to Larry Thorne in the process.
It wasn’t long before he was selected for Special Forces and became “an ideal Green Beret.” As a member of 10th SFG(A), Thorne was well positioned to serve in Europe – teaching mountaineering, survival and guerrilla techniques to fellow SF soldiers. By 1960 he was commissioned an officer again, his third time and third nation of allegiance.
One of the missions Thorne was famous for while serving in 1oth Group was a recovery mission high in the mountains of northern Iran. He succeeded where two other missions had failed, recovering classified material and the bodies of a C-130 crew. Not long afterward he deployed to Vietnam as part of 7th Group and returned for another deployment with the elite MACV SOG. Running reconnaissance missions into Laos and Cambodia, Thorne was back to doing the type of work he did in WW2.
Thorne’s chopper crashed on one of those missions in October of 1965 and he was presumed dead until his remains were located in 1999. He was buried with full military honors at Arlington Cemetery – a man who fought for Finland, Germany and died an American soldier.
His legacy however lives on. The headquarters building for the entire 10th SF Group bears his name, but more importantly the Group has an award in his name – The Larry Thorne Award – for the best detachment in the Group. One of the things I loved about SF over other SOF units such as the Ranger Regiment is the type of people it attracts. In the ’90s I served with an NCO who’d escaped from East Germany as a teenager and went on to become an American SF soldier – again, perfectly positioned in 10th Group to be on a team working in Europe.
Thorne’s exploits in Vietnam are covered in Major John Plaster’s excellent book SOG: A Photo History of the Secret Wars.









