in Mexico Many adventurers, ideologues and freebooters from outside Mexico were attracted by the purported excitement and romance of the Mexican Revolution. Most mercenaries served in armies operating in the north of Mexico, partly because those areas were the closest to popular entry points to Mexico from the U.S., and partly because Pancho Villa had no compunction about hiring mercenaries. The first legion of foreign mercenaries, during the 1910 Madero revolt, was the Falange de los Extranjeros (Foreign Phalanx), which included Giuseppe ("Peppino") Garibaldi, grandson of the famed Italian unifier, as well as many American recruits. Later, during the revolt against the coup d'état of Victoriano Huerta, many of the same foreigners and others were recruited and enlisted by Pancho Villa and his División del Norte. Villa recruited Americans, Canadians and other foreigners of all ranks from simple infantrymen on up, but the most highly prized and best paid were machine gun experts such as Sam Dreben, artillery experts such as Ivor Thord-Gray, and doctors for Villa's celebrated Servicio sanitario medic and mobile hospital corps. There is little doubt that Villa's Mexican equivalent of the French Foreign Legion (known as the "Legion of Honor") was an important factor in Villa's successes against Huerta's Federal Army. U.S. military decorations The U.S. military awarded the Mexican Service Medal to its troops for service in Mexico. The streamer is yellow with a blue center stripe and a narrow green stripe on each edge. The green and yellow recalls the Aztec standard carried at the Battle of Otumba in 1520, which carried a gold sun surrounded by the green plumes of the quetzal. The blue color alludes to the United States Army and refers to the Rio Grande separating Mexico from the United States. See also Mexican Revolution Mexico–United States relations Gallery References Further reading Anderson, Mark. C. “What’s to Be Done With ‘Em? Images of Mexican Cultural Backwardness, Racial Limitations and Moral Decrepitude in the United States Press 1913–1915”, Mexican Studies, Winter Vol. 14, No. 1 (1998): 23-70. Blaisdell, Lowell L. “Henry Lane Wilson and the Overthrow of Madero.” Southwestern Social Science Quarterly 43#2 (1962), pp. 126–35, online Boghardt, Thomas. The Zimmermann telegram: intelligence, diplomacy, and America's entry into World War I (Naval Institute Press, 2012). Britton, John. A. Revolution and Ideology: Images of the Mexican Revolution in the United States. Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky (1995) Coerver, Don M., and Linda