31. The Forgotten Hero
WWI hero Marcelino Serna was Texas’ most decorated soldier – and America’s most overlooked hero – of that conflict. He was also an illegal immigrant, born into a dirt-poor family in Chihuahua, Mexico, in 1896. He only enlisted in the US Army to avoid getting deported back to Mexico.
When he was twenty, Serna had decided to seek a brighter future north of the border. He crossed the Rio Grande in 1916, and made it to El Paso, Texas. Speaking no English, all he could manage were a series of low-paying jobs. So he left the Lone Star Republic, and headed to Colorado, where he found a better paying gig picking sugar beets near Denver. It was backbreaking work, but the pay was better than anything he had encountered before, so he kept at it.