How crazy would someone have to be to fight in wars their whole life, in three different
armies?
They would have to be crazy enough to put on skis and wind through the snowy mountains
of Finland while shooting Soviets.
They would have to be crazy enough to join Nazi Germany as an SS officer to set ambushes
for Russian soldiers.
They would have to be crazy enough to change their name, become a United States Green Beret,
and head off to war in Vietnam to bring destruction to North Vietnamese communists.
You may be thinking, there is no way one person could do all of those things.
But that’s just because you haven’t been introduced to Larry Thorne yet.
Larry Thorne is not actually his real name.
This insane soldier was born Lauri Törni, in Finland, in the year 1919.
When he became a teenager he began his life calling as a soldier.
At the age of 19 he joined the Finnish military to fight off the Soviet invasion of his homeland,
in what came to be called the Winter War.
Once Larry Thorne started fighting, he never stopped.
Thorne was given a rifle, some warm clothes, and skis to fight off the Soviets.
He was so good at killing the enemy in the winter landscape of Finland, that he quickly
rose through the ranks and was given command of his own squad.
They would wait at the top of hills until the enemy was below.
Then they would ski down the fresh powder, spraying snow from side to side as they rode
and firing bullets into the Soviet ranks.
Thorne and his squad would catch the Soviets off guard, picking them off one by one.
The ski squad commanded by Thorne would have the high ground, which made sniping enemy
soldiers easier.
But it was his precision with a rifle while skiing that made Thorne so deadly.
He could be flying down the mountain and still take out Soviets along the way.
Luckily for the Soviets, Thorne was taken out of commission in 1942 when he skied over
a mine.
The explosive device went off shattering his skis to pieces and throwing Thorne several
feet into the air.
He crawled to safety and was eventually brought back to a Finnish base to receive medical
treatment.
It was there that he was given the Mannerheim Cross, which was Finland’s version of the
Medal of Honor.
This would not be his last military medal.
Thorne had a lot more combat left in him.
Finland eventually fell to the Soviets and Thorne found his home occupied by his sworn
enemy.
In the eyes of the Soviets Finnish soldiers had two options, submit or die.
Thorne was not ready to die, and he sure as hell was not about to submit to the Soviets,
so he did the only thing he could, he joined another army.
Thorne made his way to Germany where he enlisted with the Nazi SS.
It is not clear why he decided to join the SS instead of a different country’s military.
It may have been the fastest way to get back into the fight against the Soviets, or maybe
Thorne shared certain ideologies with Nazi Germany.
Either way, Thorne made it clear he would best serve Germany on the eastern front, which
would allow him to combat the Soviets.
In the back of his mind he may have been thinking about liberating Finland more than he was
thinking about helping Hitler’s regime.
Thorne had a vendetta against the communists.
When he enlisted in the German army he received additional combat training.
Now the battles against the Soviets would not be in the snowy mountains of Finland,
but in the forests of the eastern front.
In this environment guerrilla warfare would be the most effective method for killing Soviets.
Thorne engaged enemy troops again and again, each time using his cunning to lay deadly
traps and ambushes.
He would lie in wait until the enemy was in sight, then make them pay for what they did
to his homeland.
Thorne was so deadly during the Winter War and World War II that the Soviets put a bounty
on him.
He had disrupted their plans on numerous occasions, and killed so many of their soldiers, that
the Soviets wanted him dead.
It is reported that he was the only Finnish soldier to ever have a bounty on his head.
The bounty itself was for $650,000, but no one ever tried to collect on it.
Apparently, Thorne was so well known for his deadly tactics that either everyone was too
afraid, or they figured there was no way to catch the vengeful Finnish warrior.
As World War II came to an end Thorne was arrested by British forces since he was a
SS officer.
He was sent to a POW camp.
Thorne had no qualms with the British, but he was not ready to stop fighting yet.
He staged an escape and successfully fled the British prison.
He made his way back to Finland.
Even though he had received their Medal of Honor, Thorne was arrested and tried for Treason.
He was sentenced to six years in prison by the country he loved.
Halfway into his sentence, the President of Finland found out that the war hero had been
imprisoned.
Although Thorne did join the Nazi army, he may have only done it to continue his fight
against Finland’s Soviet oppressors.
The president of Finland pardoned Thorne, and he was released from prison in 1948.
This is when things really got crazy for Larry Thorne, you won’t believe what he does next.
Europe was enjoying a moment of peace at the time Thorne was released.
He had burnt bridges among armies in Europe, but he wasn’t ready to quit being a soldier.
Thorne decided it was time to try something new.
Thanks to the passage of the Lodge-Philbin Act in June of 1950, foreigners could now
join the United States military as a path to citizenship.
This is when Lauri Törni officially changed his name to Larry Thorne and joined the ranks
of the United States Army.
The timing of the Lodge-Philbin Act and acceptance by the United States could not have come at
a better time for Thorne.
As luck would have it, the Soviets were still after him and he needed an out.
The leaders of the Soviet Union wanted Thorne to be surrendered to Moscow and tried for
war crimes.
There he would have most definitely been found guilty, regardless of if there was evidence
against him or not.
So, Thorne ran.
He made it all the way to the United States where an Army recruiter who had heard of his
commando exploits accepted him into the Army.
The U.S. military welcomed Thorne into its ranks with open arms.
While in training, Thorne distinguished himself from the other cadets.
He was quickly recruited into the newly formed special forces unit of the Army, the Green
Berets.
The commanding officers realized that the skills and knowledge Thorne possessed were
invaluable.
He was promoted and made an instructor at the Special Warfare School at Fort Bragg.
There he taught everything from survival to guerilla tactics to the Green Beret recruits.
He was known as one of the toughest captains at the base, and was so physically fit that
he often outperformed soldiers half his age.
At forty years old he had the physique and stamina of a twenty-five year old, one officer
recounted.
His first special ops mission with the Green Berets was in 1962.
He led a daring rescue mission into the Zagros Mountains in Iran to recover classified materials
from a United States Air Force C-130 plane that had crashed.
The plane wreck was located on the Iran-Turkish-Soviet border.
As soon as Thorne heard he would be engaging with Soviets, he was ready for the mission.
In his mind it had been too long since he unleashed hell on the country that had invaded
his homeland years before.
He still had plenty of pain left to dish out to the communists.
Previous missions to secure the classified intel had all failed.
But Thorne was determined not to let American secrets fall in the hands of the Soviets.
He led his men on a treacherous mission up the mountain, where the air was thin, and
danger lurked around every corner.
One wrong step and a soldier could plummet to his death, not to mention the Soviet threat
that was in the area.
The mission was a success and Thornes' squad returned with the intel.
It was safe from the communist enemy.
Upon returning to the United States Thorne continued to train Green Berets.
Then the Vietnam War broke out.
Although the Soviets were not the direct enemy, the North Vietnamese were backed by the Communist
Party.
This seemed like a job for Larry Thorne.
He immediately asked to be deployed to Vietnam where he would serve two tours, earn a Bronze
Star medal for heroism, and five Purple Hearts for combat wounds.
Thorne had been at war his whole life, and he wasn’t about to stop now.
On October 18, 1965 he led the first MACV-SOG mission into Laos.
This military squad was specially trained to gather highly classified intel and movements
of the enemy.
This particular mission was to learn more about the workings and movement down the Ho
Chi Minh Trail.
The team flew into the drop zone in South Vietnamese Air Force helicopters.
The thick jungle covered most of the ground below.
An RPG or anti-aircraft gun could blow them out of the sky at any moment.
The helicopters finally found a clearing and landed to drop off the squad.
But, the weather had turned on them.
An intense fog settled around the helicopters.
It began to thunder and lightning, rain poured down in sheets.
Thorne refused to leave until he was sure that his men had deployed safely.
He ordered the air support to wait, even as the weather worsened.
Finally, the MACV-SOG squad on the ground radioed that their deployment had been a success.
Thorne remained in the chopper, as his main role was to lead the drop and make sure that
the men could start their mission.
Now that was completed, he ordered the chopper to head back to base.
On the way back, the weather turned even worse.
There was zero visibility.
The helicopter sent out a distress call just before it crashed.
The entire crew of the chopper was declared killed in action, but the crash site couldn’t
be found.
Rumors began to circulate among the troops that Thorne was too strong to die.
Instead, he was probably deep in the jungle fighting the communist forces by himself,
and winning.
The soldiers saw him as invincible.
They believed he was hiding in the dense jungle, lying in wait for enemy soldiers to cross
his path.
Then he would pop out like a jaguar and claim his communist victims.
In reality, Larry Thorne had died in the helicopter crash.
Towards the end of the war the crashed chopper was found in the jungle.
The remains of the bodies on board were recovered, but were unidentifiable.
Then in 1999 the mystery of what happened to Larry Thorne was uncovered.
DNA confirmed the identities of the aircrew from the crash.
Along with the DNA samples, dental records also provided evidence that Thorne was among
the victims.
He was 46 years old when the chopper went down.
Thorne had just been approved for a promotion to major.
The Army bestowed the rank upon him posthumously along with the Legion of Merit and Distinguished
Flying Cross.
Larry Thorne lived his entire life as a soldier.
He fought in three different armies, and received medals of honor from two different countries.
His drive to fight may have been fueled by his hatred for communism, due to the invasion
of his homeland by the Soviets.
Or maybe Larry Thorne just was a born fighter, and that’s all he ever knew.
Either way, he was an insane soldier who is the only former Waffen-SS officer to be buried
in Arlington National Cemetery.
Now check out The Insanely Crazy Story of a Tiny Soldier.
Or watch our video about this crazy story: Soldier Sentenced to Death Escapes, Becomes
Jungle King || Insane True Story.