Serna’s Heroics
Serna’s heroics began when his unit was ordered to move towards the Meuse River and Argonne Forrest in northeastern France. It was an opening move, preparatory to the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, which became the largest offensive in US military history, involving 1.2 million American soldiers. As a preliminary, the Americans had to straighten out a salient – a massive engagement in its own right, involving 550,000 US troops and 110,000 French ones, known as the Battle of Saint-Mihiel.
At Saint-Mihiel, Serna’s unit stumbled into the kill zone of a concealed and well-positioned German machine gun nest manned by 14 soldiers. Within seconds of the Germans opened fire, 12 Americans were killed, many more were wounded, and Serna’s unit’s advance came to a halt. As the shocked survivors were pinned down, desperately scurrying for cover from enemy fire, private Serna demonstrated what he was made of, and sprang into action to rescue his comrades.
He volunteered to scout an alternate path, but once he got ahead of his unit, he saw that the enemy position was vulnerable to a flank attack from the left. So without orders, and acting on his own initiative, he used minor and barely perceptible folds and dips in the terrain to alternately crawl and rush to the German position’s left flank. Braving a torrent of angry bullets buzzing around him, two of which actually struck his helmet, Serna got close enough to the enemy machine gun nest to lob grenades into its midst. He tossed four grenades into the German position, and of its 14 occupants, the commander and five others were killed, and eight stunned German survivors were forced to throw in the towel and come out with their hands up.
That would not even be Marcelino Serna’s greatest feat of wartime heroism, but just an opening act. Two weeks later, on September 12th, 1918, on the first day of the Battle of Saint-Mihiel, Serna and his comrades were engaged in combat in the Meuse-Argonne region, when he spotted a German sniper. With his Lee Enfield rifle, Serna drew a bead on the sniper and fired a bullet that wounded the enemy soldier, who then tried to make it back to the safety of his comrades.
Acting again on his own initiative, Serna followed the wounded sniper, who led him to an enemy trench packed with about 50 German soldiers. Once again, private Serna demonstrated just how well he knew how to read and make use of the terrain to get close to the enemy. He crawled until he reached an advantageous position within grenade lobbing range of the enemy, then went into action, tossing three grenades into the packed German trench.
He then opened fire with his rifle and pistol on the stunned survivors. Alternately moving to a new position after every few shots, Serna tricked the Germans into believing that there were plenty more American soldiers all around them, not just Serna acting on his lonesome. Within minutes, 24 Germans surrendered, and another 26 enemy soldiers lay dead. Serna remained on the front after his greatest feat of heroism, fighting alongside his comrades until he was wounded 4 days before the war ended.