US Special Forces Major who fought under 3 flags

I served with a couple of old timer SF Sergeants who were there in the early 60s. From their war stories I think there were more than a few of the European foreign national types in SF back then. But looking at the original SF Groups and mission training, they were gearing up for war in Eastern Europe along the old OSS model. The early 60s and the Kennedy years saw them expand beyond that into a lot of emerging nations around the globe and counter insurgency, foreign internal defense, and other such mission taskings were added to their repertoire.

This story reminds me of a guy that was in my  Academy class back in 1976. He was an SF Colonel in Nam. His father was an SS Officer during the war and relocated to the US in the early 50's. He was the oldest guy in our group (38 or 40 at the time) but still outran us youngsters. He had a lot of fascinating war stories to tell during our lunch  and PT breaks.

In Bosnia at our base, a Finnish soldier from their contingent took a liking to me because I knew who Larry Thorne was. Made for an interesting evening afterwards... this article skips over his contributions to the early MACV SOG activities, which he helped set up in Vietnam. Quite an SF soldier indeed.

Follow along and hit the next article after that one for some pics of wrecked tanks.  Some nice pics in that one.

Thanks PJ. There's a lot of history there.

One small thing, John Wayne's character was Mike Kirby, not Sven Kornie. That Green Beret is in the book, but the movie had nothing much to do with the book.