Extraordinary Military Career of Larry Thorn

Our one soldier

served three nations and survived them all.

His name was Laurie Allen Turney, later known as Larry Allen Thorn.

Born on May 28, 1919 in Viipuri, Finland,

he would become the most extraordinary soldier of the 20th century. One man.

Three armies. One lifelong enemy. Communism.

When the Soviet Union invaded Finland in 1939,

Turney joined the 4th Independent Jaeger Infantry Battalion,

mastering behind enemy lines ski patrol tactics and long range guerrilla warfare.

During the Continuation War,

he built and commanded his own elite unit, Detachment Turney,

running long range covert raids inside Soviet territory

so effectively that the USSR placed a bounty

of three million Finnish marks on his head.

On July 9, 1944,

Finland awarded him the Mannerheim Cross,

the nation's highest military honor. He earned the rank of captain.

When Finland signed an armistice with the USSR, Turney refused to stop fighting.

Driven by his fierce opposition to Soviet expansion,

he joined the Finnish Volunteer Battalion of the Waffen SS in 1941 for training.

In early 1945,

he returned and served with Sonderkommando Nord,

commanding a German unit against the Red Army on the Eastern Front,

reaching the rank of Hauptsturmführer, equivalent to captain.

After Germany's collapse,

he surrendered to British forces, escaped a POW camp, was convicted of

treason in Finland, escaped prison multiple times, and was fully pardoned by

the Finnish president in December 1948.

In 1950, Turney jumped off a cargo ship in the Gulf of Mexico and swam ashore

to enter the US illegally.

With help from OSS founder Wild Bill Donovan and the Lodge Act,

he enlisted legally as Larry Allen Thorn.

He joined the 10th Special Forces Group,

training elite operators in guerrilla tactics, mountaineering and survival.

He later served with Special Forces A Team 734

in Vietnam's Mekong Delta before transferring to the ultra classified MACVSOG unit,

which conducted high risk reconnaissance operations.

On October 18, 1965 during Operation Shining Brass,

a classified cross border mission in Laos,

his helicopter was struck by a violent storm and crashed into

a mountainous jungle near the Laos border, 25 miles southwest of Da Nang.

He was 46 years old.

His body wasn't recovered until 1999.

In 2003, he was laid

to rest with full military honours at Arlington National Cemetery,

the only former Waffen SS soldier ever buried there.

Three flags, one obsession, stopping communism.

Hero or controversial figure,

his military career remains one of the most extraordinary of the 20th century.