The three Americans who helped thwart a massacre on board a high-speed European train were awarded the Legion d'honneur (Legion of Honor), France's highest decoration, by the country's president Monday.
U.S. Airman Spencer Stone, National Guardsman Alek Skarlatos, and their longtime friend Anthony Sadler were honored for tackling and subduing a suspected Islamist militant carrying an AK-47 on the Paris-bound train Friday.
Francois Hollande praised the actions of the three men, saying "You behaved as soldiers but also as responsible men." Hollande added that the men demonstrated "that faced with terror, we have the power to resist ... You also gave a lesson in courage, in will, and thus in hope." British businessman Chris Norman, who helped Stone, Skarlatos, and Sadler subdue the would-be gunman, also received the medal.
On Sunday evening, Stone, who was stabbed with a box cutter during the melee, described his version of the events on the train for the first time during a press conference at the U.S. ambassador's residence in Paris.
The 23-year-old described how he was waking up from a deep sleep when Skarlatos "just hit me on the shoulder and said 'Let's go.'"
Stone and Skarlatos, 22, moved in to tackle the gunman, identified as 26-year-old Moroccan Ayoub El-Khazzani, and take his assault rifle. Sadler, 23, moved in to help subdue the assailant. "All three of us started punching" him, Stone said. Stone said he choked him unconscious.
"Since Friday, the entire world admires your courage, your sangfroid, your spirit of solidarity," the French president said. "This is what allowed you to with bare hands -- your bare hands -- to subdue an armed man. This must be an example for all, and a source of inspiration."
Stone is also credited with saving a French-American teacher wounded in the neck with a gunshot wound and squirting blood. Stone described matter-of-factly that he "just stuck two of my fingers in his hole and found what I thought to be the artery, pushed down and the bleeding stopped." He said he kept the position until paramedics arrived.
"When most of us would run away, Spencer, Alek and Anthony ran into the line of fire, saying 'Let's go.' Those words changed the fate of many," U.S. Ambassador Jane Hartley said Sunday
Asked if there were lessons, Sadler had one for all who find themselves in the face of a choice.
"Do something," he said. "Hiding, or sitting back, is not going to accomplish anything. And the gunman would've been successful if my friend Spencer had not gotten up. So I just want that lesson to be learned going forward, in times of, like, terror like that, please do something. Don't just stand by and watch."
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