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The soldier of 3 Armies


Wapaloosie73

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In the 50s and 60s there were a lot of DPs in Special Forces. Especially in the 10th Group in Germany. Lary Thorne is well known in SF history. There were other Finns, Poles, Bulgarians, etc who ended up in Special Forces because of their knowledge of the Eastern Bloc countries. e were kind of the American Foreign Legion.

https://www.warhistoryonline.com/war-articles/us-major-fought-in-ss.html

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1 minute ago, Utah Bob #35998 said:

In the 50s and 60s there were a lot of DPs in Special Forces. Especially in the 10th Group in Germany. Lary Thorne is well known in SF history. There were other Finns, Poles, Bulgarians, etc who ended up in Special Forces because of their knowledge of the Eastern Bloc countries.

https://www.warhistoryonline.com/war-articles/us-major-fought-in-ss.html

In my unit of 1st Psy War Bn and 13th Psy War Bn at Ft Braggwe had almost all Foreigners - mostly Russian, Ukrainian, and Romanian and the rest were Cubans or American Puerto Ricans.  Probably now it would be Arabic speaking types.

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While I understand his hatred for all things Russian? And what motived him to join the SS?

 

It surprised me that they would let an SS officer into the US Army and rise to the rank of a major.

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6 minutes ago, Wapaloosie73 said:

While I understand his hatred for all things Russian? And what motived him to join the SS?

 

It surprised me that they would let an SS officer into the US Army and rise to the rank of a major.

Summarizing and guessing from what I read...

 

having fought in the Finnish army against the Russians, SS was a natural choice, elite forces to fight the Russians.

 

as for getting into the US Army, he might have been fingerprinted as a POW, but the systems in the 50s were not as good as today.  If he stayed in after NAM I think a subsequent Background Investigation for security clearance would have found him out.  I got my security clearance back then but my BIs never came back.

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36 minutes ago, Wapaloosie73 said:

While I understand his hatred for all things Russian? And what motived him to join the SS?

 

It surprised me that they would let an SS officer into the US Army and rise to the rank of a major.

Not much stranger than using Nazi Werner Von Braun and company.

”The enemy of my enemy is my friend” ad the feller said

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The French Foriegn Legion acceptance of former Waffen SS guys was well known after the war. Plenty of those guys died it went into captivity in Viet Nam several years before Larry was in country.

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7 hours ago, Utah Bob #35998 said:

Not much stranger than using Nazi Werner Von Braun and company.

”The enemy of my enemy is my friend” ad the feller said

 

The SS were responsible for most of the genocide in Europe as well as illegal shootings of POWs. Not that he participated in any of it.

 

Just curious is all.

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6 hours ago, grenadier said:

The French Foriegn Legion acceptance of former Waffen SS guys was well known after the war. Plenty of those guys died it went into captivity in Viet Nam several years before Larry was in country.

 

Yes. Dien Bien Phu.

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