For John -- Vikings in Afghanistan

[LRRPF52]

In John Plaster's book SOG, they had a short history of Finnish soldier Lauri Torni, "Larry Thorne". His exploits rivaled Oberst Hans Ulrich Rudels. Any one of Finnish decent could be proud of him.

Lauri Törni has quite the story if you start to research it. His participation in SOG by that point in his career was more as an officer working in operations, intelligence, and air. His direct combat experience dated back to the Winter War of 1939, then the Continuation War during WWII, where he led cross border commando raid missions into Russia as a Company Commander. He escaped multiple prisons, and made it to the US after the War, where he enlisted in the US Army. He got into 77th Special Forces Group at Bragg as enlisted SF (keep in mind the guy was a Mannerheim Cross awardee from WWII), then went to OCS, got a commission in Signal Corps, and went to Germany with 11th Airborne Division IIRC.

He had a "small altercation" with two German nationals in a historic bar, which was severely damaged in the process of hospitalizing the gentlemen who attacked him. Facing a Court Martial, he was saved by a Finnish Battalion Commander in 10th Special Forces Group from Bad Tölz. It was also discovered that the 2 guys he placed on breathing and feeding tubes were wanted by the West German Polizei, and the charges went away.

Within 10th Group, he served as a Detachment commander, ultimately pulling off a recovery mission in Iran that 3 other special operations and rescue units were unable to reach the crash site, involving a downed US reconnaissance bird that had been flying missions into the Soviet Union. Its sensitive components and bodies of the crew were a top priority for the US to recover, and Thorne's Team made it happen.

He went from there to 7th Group commanding A-734, and was the subject of a book written by Robin Moore called The Green Berets. A cover name was used in the book describing a Swedish descent SF officer named "Sven Kornie", in order to protect the identities of the men Moore was writing about. It was later made into a movie starring John Wayne and David Janssen, with the same title.

Thorne started a 2nd tour in Vietnam with 5th Group, then went over to SOG to work as an operations and intelligence officer. He was on a C2 bird overseeing the insertion of SOG's first recon teams into Laos when they hit cloudy weather, resulting in the crash of that aircraft and the death of the crew, including Thorne. His remains were recovered in 1999, and ID'd by 2003.