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Lenny Kravitz’s Hero Uncle and Other Lesser Known American Heroes

Khalid Elhassan August 18, 2020 35 min

American Revolutionary War - United States — The British surrender at Yorktown. Library of Congress

28. Declining a Chance to Get Out of Fighting Another Country’s War

Engineers from the 89th Division, making barbed wire entanglements. Wikimedia

After boot camp, Marcelino Serna was sent to join the American Expeditionary Force in France, where he was assigned to Company B, 355^th Infantry Regiment, in the 89^th Division. Once he got to the trenches, Serna’s unit realized that he was not an American citizen. His company commander informed Serna that as a Mexican national, he did not have to be there.

So he was offered a discharge. Although it would have been quite understandable had Serna taken it, considering it was not his war but that of a country he had only lived in for less than a year, he declined. A stand-up guy, he decided to stick with his comrades.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.