PARIS -- French President Francois Hollande on Monday pinned his country's highest award, the Legion of Honor, on three Americans and a Briton, saying they "gave a lesson in courage" by subduing a heavily armed attacker on a high-speed train carrying 500 passengers to Paris.
Hollande said that though two of the Americans who tackled the gunman were soldiers, "on Friday you were simply passengers. You behaved as soldiers but also as responsible men."
The French president awarded the medals to U.S. Airman Spencer Stone, National Guardsman Alek Skarlatos, their longtime friend Anthony Sadler, and British businessman Chris Norman. All took part in subduing the gunman as he moved through the Amsterdam-to-Paris train with an assault rifle strapped to his bare chest.
Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel and U.S. Ambassador Jane Hartley also attended the ceremony, along with the head of French national railway authority SNCF.
The men showed "that faced with terror, we have the power to resist. You also gave a lesson in courage, in will, and thus in hope," Hollande said.
Norman said it was less a question of heroism than survival.
"I said to myself, 'You're not going to die sitting there doing nothing,'" he said after the ceremony. "I would do it again. But I don't know -- I think you never know the reaction you will have in those kinds of situations."
The businessman said he "never thought I'd ever been given such a medal. I will try to be a credit to this honor."
"Since Friday, the entire world admires your courage, your sangfroid, your spirit of solidarity," Hollande said. "This is what allowed you to with bare hands -- your bare hands -- subdue an armed man. This must be an example for all, and a source of inspiration."
Stone left later Monday for Ramstein, Germany, and then went for a military medical check at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, according to spokesman Juan Melendez.
Skarlatos also traveled Monday to Germany "to accompany his friend after the traumatic experience they went through together," Melendez said. Sadler's plans were not made public.
Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said Monday that the U.S. military services are considering "appropriate awards to recognize their heroic actions." Those recommendations would be up to each individual service.
Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James said later Monday that Stone's military unit is nominating him for the Airman's Medal. And Stone could be eligible for the Purple Heart if French authorities conclude the attack was a terrorist event, said Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh.
"Had it not been for this heroic quartet, I'm quite sure that today we would be sitting here discussing a bloodbath instead of what, in fact, we are going to discuss," James said during a Pentagon news conference announcing the unit's award nomination.
"Airman Stone and his friends personified service before self, no question about it. Their fearlessness, courage, and selflessness should inspire all of us, and thanks to them, no one died on that high-speed European train on Friday."
The Airman's Medal is the service's highest noncombat award, and it's ranked above the Purple Heart. The medal is awarded to service members who commit a heroic act, "usually at the voluntary risk of his or her life but not involving actual combat," according to the Air Force description of the award.
Davis said it also will be up to each service to determine whether Stone and Skarlatos can wear the Legion of Honor; generally foreign awards are not worn except "under certain circumstances when you're in dress uniform."
Davis added that "we continue to be very proud of Airman Spencer Stone and his friends, who took immediate action to stop that attack and subdue the armed gunman. Airman Stone is on the road to recovery. We do thank our French partners for taking care of him."
A French passenger, who was the first to try to stop the attacker, was also honored Monday, but he did not want his identity to be released, Hollande said.
Hollande said another passenger, French-American citizen Mark Moogalian, also intervened. Moogalian is hospitalized with a gunshot wound, and his wife told Europe-1 radio Monday that he, too, "is among the heroes in this story."
Isabella Risacher-Moogalian described hiding behind train seats from the attacker and then seeing her husband wounded. "He looked at me and said 'I'm hit, I'm hit.' He thought it was over and he was going to die," she said.
Moroccan suspect
The purported gunman, identified as 26-year-old Moroccan Ayoub El-Khazzani, was detained and was being questioned by French counterterrorism officers outside Paris.
El-Khazzani's lawyer, Sophie David, told Le Monde newspaper that El-Khazzani is poorly educated, emaciated, and told her he had spent the past six months traveling between Belgium, Germany and Austria, as well as France and Andorra. She said he told her he only intended to rob the train with a cache of guns he found in a public garden near the train station and that he is "dumbfounded" that it is being treated as an act of terrorism.
The attack highlighted concerns about the limits in the ability of security services to stop lone attackers from less-sophisticated acts of violence.
"I don't think we can rely entirely on the police, the law enforcement services," Norman said. "They will do their best. We can put in place the best intelligence networks, but somebody is probably going to get through at some stage. And my vision of this is that as citizens, we need to be prepared to think about how to act.
"We need to have it in our minds, because if I had never thought it before, then I probably would've just been sitting in a corner cowering," he said.
With thousands of Europeans believed to be radicalized by propaganda from the Islamic State group, governments are increasingly worried about the possibility of carnage by individuals, after little planning, in a setting where there is minimal security.
If the attack fails, terrorist groups simply ignore it. If it succeeds, they claim responsibility for the work done by their "brother."
"This creates a really interesting dilemma for law enforcement. You don't have to be a mastermind or a sophisticated individual to kill a lot of people if you have weapons and they do not," said William Braniff, director of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism.
The Islamic State has issued no comment on the failed attack. But on Sunday, a pro-Islamic State media group released a nine-minute video calling on "Lone Lions" to kill Americans and Europeans.
El-Khazzani was known to intelligence agents in at least three countries. German Interior Ministry spokesman Johannes Dimroth said Germany tracked El-Khazzani in May flying from Berlin to Istanbul -- a gateway to Syria for many militants.
Rolf Tophoven, a terrorism expert and director of the Institute for Crisis Prevention in Essen, Germany, said the thwarted train attack illustrates how difficult it is for authorities to prevent such violence by solo extremists or small groups.
"This is a development coming up more and more -- not a huge terrorist network behind these guys, it's enough to be inspired and get a weapon," he said.
Information for this article was contributed by Lori Hinnant, Angela Charlton and Lolita C. Baldor of The Associated Press.
A Section on 08/25/2015