In late November 1939, the Soviet Union launched its offensive into Finland. Over 450.000 Soviet
soldiers invaded their much smaller neighbour, signalling the start of the Winter War. The
Soviet behemoth was way more powerful than the Finnish army, and although the Finns offered
unexpectedly fierce resistance, the war ended within four months. Among those brave Finnish
soldiers was Lauri Allan Törni, during the initial stages of the conflict a merely 19-year-old
soldier. Törni fiercely fought the Soviets, and during the continuation war, he again
served his country. Yet within a few years, he joined another army unit: the German Waffen
SS. Still, eventually, Lauri died in yet another war. His helicopter was shot down 20 years
after the second world war ended, above the jungle in Vietnam. It was a helicopter of
the United States Air Force with Captain Lauri, alias Larry Thorne on board. Lauri Törni’s
story is an exceptional one of a young man that served in 3 different armies, remembered
for his personal courage.
Intro
World War 2
Following high school, Lauri enrolled in business school and joined the Finnish Civil Guard.
In 1938 at the age of 19, he enlisted in the Finnish army. He joined the 4th independent
Jaeger, an elite infantry unit. Fate had it that one year later the Soviet Union invaded
Finland. Lauri was sent to the front and saw action for the first time. It was a battle
of David vs Goliath, although the victory of this Finnish David would not be after a
defeat and several more years of war. The winter war is notorious for the Soviets thinking
they could quickly overrun the way smaller and inferior equipped Finnish army. Nevertheless,
the fierce resistance the Finns put up was a proper reality check for them. Using guerilla
tactics the Finns managed to hold out for four months, much longer than anyone expected,
and what is more, inflicting much more damage than initially anticipated.
Lauri too did his part. Using guerilla tactics, he engaged the Soviets at current-day Sosnovo
and fought under the command of General Harald Öhquist. Yet Finland had no other option
but to sign the Moscow peace treaty in March 1940. Due to his exceptional bravery in battle
following the war Lauri was promoted to the rank of 2nd Lieutenant. Because the Moscow
treaty was only a delay of the next war, something many Finns realised, the soldiers did not
pause their training. During the interim peace that lasted from March 1940 to June 41, Finland
and Nazi Germany’s ties strengthened and intensified. Finland mainly relied on Germany
for military aid and the supply of weaponry. The Finnish military helped with the planning
of Operation Barbarossa and allowed German troops on their territory. In turn, the Germans
agreed to train Finnish soldiers. Lauri, as a matter of fact, moved to Vienna Austria,
where he joined the Waffen SS and trained with them for two months. He reached the rank
of Untersturmführer, more or less the equivalent of 2nd Lieutenant. In spring 1941 he returned
to Finland and received the command over a special ski-troop, Finnish soldiers on skies
that would wage guerilla warfare against the enemy, often times behind enemy lines.
Lauri happened to return at just the right time. In June 1941 Operation Barbarossa was
launched by Nazi Germany. In response, the Soviets invaded Finland (again) in order to
secure their northern border. This conflict became known as the War of Continuation. As
for Lauri’s unit, during this war they did suffer many casualties, but due to Lauri distinguishing
himself for his exceptional exploits, the unit unofficially became known as ‘Detachment
Törni.’ They went behind enemy lines and sabotaged Soviet military operations. The
detachment didn’t go unnoticed among the Soviets either and a pretty hefty bounty was
placed on Lauri’s head: 3 million Finnish marks, which apparently is roughly 650 thousand
USD. Yet nobody could cash this bounty because within a year Lauri himself skied into a mine
and suffered considerable injuries. Disregarding the injuries, he didn’t leave the battle
for too long. In 1944 he led an infantry battalion against the Soviets, and for his exploits
and bravery, he received the Mannerheim Cross, Finland’s highest military decoration.
It wasn’t until September 1944, for the Moscow Armistice to be signed between Finland
and the Soviet Union. The armistice ended the War of Continuation. Now, I won’t be
getting too much into the specifics but one of the requirements of the armistice was that
all German forces, Finland’s former ally, had to be expelled from Finland. What followed
was the Lapland war, with the former allies pitted against each other. Skirmishes broke
out between Finnish soldiers and their former allies, the Germans, that they had to expel.
Also, the Finnish army was to be demobilised following this war, according to the treaty.
Now it has to be said that Lauri didn’t support the Nazi ideology necessarily, at
least I cannot find any concrete evidence for that in sources. But due to the demobilisation
of the Finnish army and his vehement anti-communism and hatred for the Soviets, Lauri saw no other
option but to join the German anti-Soviet resistance. It wasn’t that easy and clear
cut though. In January 1945 he was approached by a pro-German resistance group that wanted
to train him to become a saboteur in case the Soviet Union decided to invade Finland
again following the war. Wouldn’t have been the first time. Lauri travelled to Germany
to receive his training, but because the war came to an end in March that year, he was
unable to return to Finland. Right before the war ended, he picked up arms with a unit
and fought against the Soviets advancing on Schwerin in northern Germany. Following a
Soviet victory, Lauri fled to the west and surrendered to the British Army, in an attempt
to escape certain execution by the Soviets. The British incarcerated him in a POW camp
in Lübeck. Lauri’s gamble had paid off… in a way.
After WW2
Now, following his imprisonment, Lauri somehow managed to escape the camp and return to Finland
on his own in June. From this point, the story jumps a bit in time - but what is known is
that following the Second World War Finland tried to reject any implications of their
alliance with Nazi Germany. With Lauri suddenly turning up, not just having been a member
of the SS but actually having fought with them, in Germany, he became subject of symbolic
politics. Due to his Mannerheim cross, it was quite a delicate case. Many considered
him a war hero that simply despised the Soviets, others saw him as a war criminal that was
on the wrong side of history. Eventually he was arrested for treason. But knowing Lauri
he escaped, and he was arrested again in April 1946. He was sentenced to 6 years in prison...
and escaped again. Not too long after he was recaptured, and served two years of his six-year
sentence before he received a pardon from Juho Kusti Paasikivi, the Finnish president
himself. As you can probably imagine Lauri didn’t
receive the recognition he thought he would for trying to defend his country against the
communist menace. As such in 1950 he travelled to the United States. But it wasn’t just
because of personal motives: according to sources the Soviets wanted Finland to arrest
Lauri as a German collaborator, have him extradited to Moscow and try him for war crimes. By crossing
the border with Sweden and sailing to the United States on a cargo boat, Larry near-certainly
escaped a death sentence. Fate had it that the same year Lauri arrived
in the United States, Congress introduced legislation that established what would become
the United States Army Special Forces. Two years later the first Special Forces unit,
the green berets, was created. Also, thanks to the Lodge-Philbin act of June 1950, foreigners
were allowed not just to join the US military, but after five years of service, they would
also receive citizenship. Because of his experience and skill-set, Lauri was able to enter the
United States Army in 1954. He did change his name to match his new country a bit better,
and from now on was known as Larry Thorne. The US army recognised Larry for his experience,
and he managed to end up in the Special Forces, teaching guerilla warfare to new recruits.
Still, Larry wasn’t the only one: over 200 eastern Europeans joined the US army before
1959. He managed to rise through the ranks and ended up a captain when he saw his first
action as a US green beret. In 1962 in Iran, a US C-130 plane containing
classified material crashed on the Iran-Turkish-Soviet border. To be specific it crashed on Mount
Ararat, Turkey’s highest mountain. The height and climate made it near impossible for rescue
missions to reach the plane. After 3 failed attempts, Larry was sent in together with
his unit and managed to secure the documents and bodies. Following this mission, Larry
was sent to Southern Vietnam where the conflict in Vietnam was rapidly escalating into a full-fledged
war. He was wounded twice, earning him two purple hearts and a bronze medal. Due to his
injuries, he was given the option to perform administrative duties but instead Larry request
command of a special-operations base. He completed his first tour with success, and actually
returned on a second tour in Vietnam, as part of a reconnaissance and intelligence unit.
With this unit they participated in a cross-border operation into Laos to try and track the Vietcong
along the Ho Chi Minh trail. In October 1965 the unit was on such a mission. Although it
was a success upon their return, due to bad weather the helicopter crashed into the jungle.
Upon the unit’s failure to return the crew, including Larry, were listed as missing in
action, only to be changed to killed in action when the wreckage of the aircraft was discovered
a week later. But, although the bodies of the aircrew were found, Larry’s body wasn’t.
For a long time, it was thought he was abducted by the Viet Cong and alive somewhere in the
jungle. It was fruitful ground for theories about his survival, because to his former
brothers in arms and the public that got to know a little of his exploits, it seemed likely
this larger-than-life figure would not simply have died in a helicopter crash. But information
surrounding his possible capture remained eerily quiet… even after the war ended.
It wasn’t until 1999 that Lauri Törni’s remains were found by a US-Finnish mission
set out to locate his remains around the crash site. The remains were recovered and through
DNA- and dental testing it was confirmed they were Larry’s. He was repatriated to the
United States in a ceremony that was even attended by Madeleine Albright, the then-secretary
of state. US Army special forces Colonel Sean Swindell said, during the ceremony, that Larry
was “a complex yet driven man who vigorously fought oppression under three flags and didn’t
acknowledge the meaning of quit.” Larry Thorne has his own grave at the Arlington
National Cemetery, although in Finland too they again consider him a national hero. Oh,
and obligatory, the Swedish heavy metal band wrote a song about his life.
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