Lauri Allan Törni (May 28, 1919 – October 18, 1965) was a
Finnish Army captain who led an infantry company in Finnish Winter and Continuation War and moved to the
United States after the war. He is known as the soldier who fought under three flags: Finnish and German (when he fought the Russians in
World War II) and American (where he was known as
Larry Thorne) when he fought in the
U.S. Army Special Forces in the
Vietnam War.
Larry Thorne, christened "Lauri Allan Törni" at birth, was born in
Viipuri, Finland, to a ship captain and his family. He entered military service in 1938 and attended the Reserve Officer school in
Hamina on February 1940 in the middle of the Winter War.
In the fall of 1939, Lauri Törni was just completing his enlistment in the Finnish Army when the Soviet Union attacked Finland. Törni's term in the army was extended as part of the country's general mobilization, and he was originally assigned to supply troops. During the battles at
Lake Ladoga he was transferred to the front line. He took part in the annihilation of the encircled Russian divisions in
Lemetti. His heroic feats during these engagements were quickly noticed by his commanders and toward the end of the war he was assigned to officer training where he was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant as the war ended.
Lauri Törni in
Waffen-SS uniform.
After the Winter War, in 1941 Törni was one of the men who were sent to
Germany to train with
Waffen-SS, but he soon returned home.
Most of Törni's reputation is based on his successful feats in the
Continuation War (1941–44) between the
Soviet Union and Finland. In 1943 a famous unit informally named
Detachment Törni was created under his command. This was an infantry unit that penetrated and fought deep behind the enemy lines and soon enjoyed a reputation on both sides of the front for its effectiveness. One of Törni's men was the future
President of Finland,
Mauno Koivisto. The two served together for instance in the crucial
Battle of Ilomantsi, the very final Finnish-Soviet fight of the
Continuation War in July and August 1944. Koivisto witnessed this battle as a soldier in a reconnaissance company commanded by Captain Törni.
Törni's units inflicted continued heavy casualties on Russian units and the Soviet Army had a bounty on Törni's head equivalent to 3 million Finnish Marks (650,000 USD), reputedly the only Finnish officer so recognized. He was decorated with the
Mannerheim Cross, the equivalent of the American
Medal of Honor, on July 9, 1944.
Törni was dissatisfied with the terms of the
Finnish peace treaty with the Soviets, which required Finland to take up arms against Germany in the
Lapland War. He was recruited by a pro-German resistance movement in Finland and went to Germany in 1945 for
saboteur training, in order to be able to organize resistance in the case that Finland would be taken by the Soviet Union. He surrendered to British troops in the last stages of the war and eventually returned to
Finland after escaping a British POW camp. Upon his return,
ValPo (State Police) arrested him and he was sentenced to 6 years in prison for
treason for having joined the German army with which Finland was at war.
[4] Törni was pardoned by President
Paasikivi in December 1948.
[edit] United States
In 1949 Törni, accompanied by his wartime executive officer Holger Pitkänen, escaped to
Sweden, crossing the border from
Tornio to
Haparanda, where many of the inhabitants are of ethnic Finnish origin. From Haparanda Törni travelled by railroad to
Stockholm where he found protection and shelter with the Baroness Von Essen, who had harbored many fugitive Finnish officers following the war. Pitkänen was arrested and repatriated to Finland, but Törni fell in love with a Swedish Finn, Marja Kops, and was soon engaged to be married. Hoping to establish a career before the marriage, Thorne travelled disguised in alias as a seaman from Sweden aboard a ship,
SS Bolivia, whose destination was
Caracas,
Venezuela. In Caracas' harbour, Törni met one of his Winter War commanders, Finnish colonel Matti "Motti" Aarnio, who, also in exile, had settled in Venezuela after the war. In Caracas Törni, in 1950, was hired still under an alias to a Swedish cargo ship,
MS Skagen, whose destination was the
United States. In the
Gulf of Mexico, near the city of
Mobile,
Alabama, Törni jumped overboard and swam to shore. Törni travelled to
New York City where, with the help of the Finnish-American community living in Brooklyn's "Finntown," he got a job as a carpenter and a cleaner. In 1953 Törni was granted permit of residence through an Act of Congress that was shepherded by the law firm of "Wild Bill" Donovan, the head of the OSS, America's wartime covert military organization.
Törni joined the
U.S. Army in 1954 under the provisions of the
Lodge Act and took the name
Larry Thorne. In the US Army he was befriended and supported by a group of Finnish-American officers who came to be known as "Marttinen's Men." Similar to Thorne, this group of decorated Finnish wartime officers had emigrated to the United States and were inducted into the US Army under the Lodge Act. Several of them were brought into the Special Forces at its inception. With their support Private Thorne, too, was soon on his way into the Special Forces. He ended up as an instructor in the Special Forces and taught
skiing, survival, mountaineering and
guerrilla tactics. In turn he learned parachuting. Quickly working through the ranks, he was commissioned a 1st Lieutenant (Res) in 1957. He later received a regular commission and was promoted to Captain in 1960. From 1958 to 1962 he served in the
10th Special Forces unit in
West Germany. While there he co-commanded a search and rescue mission in the high Zagora mountains of Iran, an operation which gained him a notable reputation in the Special Forces. In November 1963 he joined the Special Forces unit A-734 in
Vietnam and fought in the
Mekong Delta. He was decorated twice.
In 1965 he had been transferred to
MACVSOG training unit in Vietnam as a military advisor. On October 18, 1965, he left for a clandestine mission and his helicopter crashed 25 miles (40 km) from
Da Nang, in a mountainous area of
Laos. When the rescue squad arrived, they did not find his body. It is assumed that he either died in the crash or in battle afterwards on October 18.
Shortly after his disappearance in Laos, Thorne was promoted to the rank of a major in the U.S. Army.
Larry Thorne's remains were found in 1999 and formally identified in 2003. He was buried at
Arlington National Cemetery, section 60, tombstone 8136, on June 26, 200
Muerto por dentro
Clásico
Veterano
Freak
Freak total
Baneado
Forero del todo a cien
