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The Christy Collection

Military Stories and Articles

SGT Robert Pryor, U.S. Army (1967-1969)

SGT Robert Pryor, U.S. Army (1967-1969)

What memorabilia/souvenirs have you kept from your military service? What special meaning do these have for you?:

Disembarking at Cam Ranh Air Force Base, Viet Nam, in 1968, we were to exchange our field jackets for steel pots (helmet with liner) and flak vests (body armor). I dutifully lined up like everybody else. After handing my jacket to a member of the Rear Echelon Military Force (REMF), I reached for a helmet. He grabbed it and said, “Not you.” When I asked why, he said, “I thought you knew. Your Green Beret is bulletproof.”

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Lt. Col. James Rowe, U.S. Army (1958 – 1989)

Lt. Col. James Rowe, U.S. Army (1958 – 1989)

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Throughout the Vietnam War, the United States estimated that more than 2,500 American service members were taken prisoner or went missing during the Vietnam War. North Vietnam acknowledged only 687 of those unaccounted for. Most of them were returned during Operation Homecoming in 1973 after the Paris Peace Accords ended U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Of those 687, only 36 U.S. troops managed to escape their captors in North Vietnam and Laos. Of course, there were other attempts, but only those...

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Veteran of Three Wars Under Three Flags

Veteran of Three Wars Under Three Flags

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Lauri Allan Torni, later known as Larry Thorne, spent the majority of his life-fighting communists. First, the Soviets while in the service of Finland and Germany during World War II and then the Vietcong and North Vietnamese as a U.S. Army Special Forces officer during the Vietnam War. Biography Veteran of Three Wars Larry Thorne Lauri Torni was born in Finland, the son of a sea captain, in 1919. He enlisted in the Finnish Army at the age of 18 and was near the completion of his enlistment...

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Vietnam War – Battle of Camp Bunard (1969)

Vietnam War – Battle of Camp Bunard (1969)

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Gazing out the open cargo doors of the Huey flying over Phouc Long Province, boyish-looking Specialist 4 Robert Pryor took in an endless landscape of mountains, meandering rivers and rolling hills covered with dense evergreen vegetation, bamboo thickets, and triple canopy tropical broadleaf forests. The forbidding wilderness had an odd virginal beauty. It was also one of the most dangerous places in South Vietnam. This sparsely populated highland plateau, nestled along the Cambodian border...

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