Rao bulletin 1 February 2017 html edition this bulletin contains the following articles pg Article Subject
Captain Lauri Törni (Finland) SS Trooper (Germany U.S. Green Beret
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- Vet Cemetery Rhode Island Update 02 ► Grave Mix-Up
Captain Lauri Törni (Finland) SS Trooper (Germany U.S. Green Beret Unfortunately for Törni, Finland signed a ceasefire and ceded some territory to the Soviets in 1944 to end hostilities. But instead of surrendering, he joined up with the German SS so he could continue fighting. He received additional training in Nazi Germany and then looked forward to kicking some Commie butt once more. But then Germany fell too, and the Finn-turned-Waffen SS officer was arrested by the British, according to War History Online. Not that being put into a prison camp would stop him either. “In the last stages of the war he surrendered to the British and eventually returned to Finland after escaping a British POW camp,” reads the account at War History Online. “When he returned, he was then arrested by the Finns, even though he had received their Medal of Honor, and was sentenced to 6 years in prison for treason.” He ended up serving only half his sentence before he was pardoned by the President of Finland in 1948. Törni’s path to the U.S. Army was paved by crucial legislation from Congress along with the creation of a new military unit: Special Forces. In June 1950, the Lodge-Philbin Act passed, which allowed foreigners to join the U.S. military and allowed them citizenship if they served honorably for at least five years. Just two years later, the Army would stand up its new Special Forces unit at Fort Bragg, N.C. More than 200 eastern Europeans joined Army Special Forces before the Act expired in 1959, according to Max Boot. One of those enlistees was Törni, who enlisted in 1954 under the name Larry Thorne. “The Soviets wanted to get their hands on Thorne and forced the Finnish government to arrest him as a wartime German collaborator. They planned to take him to Moscow to be tried for war crimes,” reads the account at ArlingtonCemetery.net. “Thorne had other plans. He escaped, made his way to the United States, and with the help of Wild Bill Donovan became a citizen. The wartime head of the OSS knew of Thorne’s commando exploits.” Thorne quickly distinguished himself among his peers of Green Berets. Though he enlisted as a private, his wartime skill-set led him to become an instructor at the Special Warfare School at Fort Bragg teaching everything from survival to guerrilla tactics. In 1957, he was commissioned a second lieutenant and would rise to the rank of captain just as war was on the horizon in Vietnam. But first, he would take part in a daring rescue mission inside of Iran. In 1962, then-Capt. Thorne led an important mission to recover classified materials from a U.S. Air Force plane that crashed on a mountaintop on the Iran-Turkish-Soviet border, according to Helsingin Sanomat. Though three earlier attempts to secure the materials had failed, Thorne’s team was successful. According to the U.S. Army Thorne quickly made it into the U.S. Special Forces and in 1962, as a Captain, he led his detachment onto the highest mountain in Iran to recover the bodies and classified material from an American C-130 airplane that had crashed. It was a mission in which others had failed, but Thorne’s unrelenting spirit led to its accomplishment. This mission initially formed his status as a U.S. Special Forces legend, but it was his deep strategic reconnaissance and interdiction exploits with Military Assistance Command, Vietnam Studies and Observation Group, also known as MACV-SOG, that solidified his legendary status. In Vietnam, he earned the Bronze Star medal for heroism, along with five Purple Hearts for combat wounds, War History Online writes. According to Helsingin Sanomat, his wounds allowed him to return to the rear away from combat, but he refused and instead requested command of a special operations base instead. On Oct. 18, 1965, Thorne led the first MACV-SOG cross-border mission into Laos to interdict North Vietnamese movement down the Ho Chi Minh trail. Using South Vietnamese Air Force helicopters, his team was successfully inserted into a clearing inside Laos while Thorne remained in a chase helicopter to direct support as needed. Once the team gave word they had made it in, he responded that he was heading back to base. Roughly five minutes later while flying in poor visibility and bad weather, the helicopter crashed. The Army first listed him as missing in action, then later declared he was killed in action — in South Vietnam. The wreckage of the aircraft was found prior to the end of the war and the remains of the South Vietnamese air crew were recovered, but Thorne was never found. Thorne’s exploits in combat made him seem invincible among his Special Forces brothers, and with his body never recovered, many believed he had survived the crash and continued to live in hiding or had been taken prisoner by the North Vietnamese, according to POW Network. “Many believed he was exactly the sort of near-indestructible soldier who would have simply walked back out of the jungle, and they found it hard to believe he had been killed,” writes Helsingin Sanomat. In 1999, the mystery was finally put to rest. The remains of the legendary Special Forces soldier were recovered from the crash site. DNA confirmed the identities of the air crew, while dental records proved Törni had died on that fateful night in 1965, reported Helsingin Sanomat. “He was a complex yet driven man who valorously fought oppression under three flags and didn’t acknowledge the meaning of quit,” U.S. Army Special Forces Col. Sean Swindell said during a ceremony in 2010. [Source: We Are the Mighty | Paul Szoldra | July 2, 2015 ++] **************************** Vet Cemetery Rhode Island Update 02 ► Grave Mix-Up Seven people were buried in the wrong graves at a veterans' cemetery because grave markers in one row were off by a burial plot. Veterans Affairs Director Kasim Yarn apologized on 23 JAN for the grave mix-up."We recognize our cemetery is hallowed ground, and we did not meet our obligation to our veterans, their loved ones who are buried here or the families and the veterans who continue to come to our cemetery to pay their respects," he said at his office in Warwick. Rhode Island Veterans Memorial Cemetery workers left two spaces instead of one to transfer the remains of a veteran's father in November 2010. The extra space wasn't accounted for when permanent grave markers were added that spring. Consequently, 21 grave markers were off. Seven interments occurred in that row since 2010, resulting in those cemetery vaults being buried in the adjacent plots.   
The dead people and the markers were moved this past weekend. Families are being contacted. Yarn said he was alerted to the issue on 19 JAN, after the grounds crew at the Exeter cemetery discovered the issue as it prepared for a burial in the row that day. Yarn said there wasn't a formalized process to prevent mistakes like this and he's addressing that. Among the changes, when someone buries a vault, a second cemetery worker will verify that it's correctly placed. Yarn said he believes the mistake was an isolated incident, and he said no staff members are being disciplined. The cemetery's administrator took over in November. More than 34,000 people are buried at the cemetery, with about 1,200 interments occurring annually. [Source: Associated Press | January 23, 2017 ++] ***************************** Directory: wp-content -> uploads -> 2017 2017 -> Leadership ohio 2017 -> Ascension Lutheran Church Counter’s Schedule January to December 2017 2017 -> Board of directors juanita Gibbons-Delaney, mha, rn president 390 Stone Castle Pass Atlanta, ga 30331 2017 -> Military History Anniversaries 16 thru 31 January Events in History over the next 15 day period that had U. S. military involvement or impacted in some way on U. S military operations or American interests 2017 -> The Or Shalom Cemetery Community Teaching on related issues of Integral 2017 -> Ford onthult samenwerking met Amazon Alexa en introduceert nieuwe navigatiemogelijkheden van Ford sync® 3 met Applink 2017 -> Start Learn and Increase gk. Question (1) Name the term used for talking on internet with the help of text messege? 2017 -> Press release from 24. 03. 2017 From a Charleston Car to a Mafia Sedan 2017 -> Tage Participants 2017 -> Citi Chicago Debate Championship Varsity and jv previews Download 7 Mb. Share with your friends:
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