RICHMOND, Va. (AP) -- Sixty-six years after his front-line bravery as a soldier in Nazi-occupied France, 87-year-old Norvelle Langhorne has his Bronze Star.

Sen. Mark Warner decorated the former U.S. Army private Friday in a ceremony before about two dozen of Langhorne's family members and friends at the Virginia War Memorial in Richmond.

Langhorne was on the front lines with the 95th Infantry Division supplying Gen. George S. Patton's 3rd Army with fuel as it rolled across France in 1944, liberating it from Hitler's grip.

He recalled the sometimes bizarre brutality of war - seeing comrades blown to pieces during combat, using crates of live ammunition for a bed, crouching with captured Germans in American foxholes while under siege from German artillery.

"It was quite traumatic to see blown-up bodies all around you. That's quite uncommon for a citizen soldier, you know," said Langhorne, who returned from war in 1945, then traveled the South for 40 years working in sales for Atlantic Coast Line Railroad, which later became part of Seaboard and finally CSX Transportation.

"We had great faith. That's what held us up," he said after the ceremony, surrounded by his wife of 67 years, Alice, their children, grandchildren and three great-grandsons who frolicked about the downtown memorial that honors Virginians who had died serving their country.

"I carried a New Testament Bible in my right pocket, over my heart, the whole time," he said. "Our church gave it to us."

Langhorne still keeps the hand-sized Bible atop a bureau in his home.

He kept the indelible memories of war's horror to himself through his railroad career and the nearly 28 years since he retired, never dreaming he qualified for the medal awarded for bravery or meritorious service.

"I'd heard of the Bronze Star, but I was amazed that I qualified for it," Langhorne said. His thoughts, he said, always turned to buddies who never came back home.

His youngest daughter, Janet Langhorne, who works for the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Richmond, learned that her father met the criteria and she contacted Warner's office.

During his service in Europe, Norvelle Langhorne had received the Combat Infantry Badge, the European Campaign Medal and the World War II Victory Medal, among others.

"I'm particularly proud of him because I work with veterans, and I know what an honor this is," Janet Langhorne said.

Lean and tall with a white thicket of eyebrows and an elegant shock of graying and white hair, Langhorne stood straight, shoulders back, as Warner pinned the medal to his navy blue blazer. He lamented the murderous wastefulness of war while praising those who still answer the nation's call to arms.

He speaks slowly in a soft Virginia drawl, deepened by years when his job posted him in the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida and other Southern venues.

"But never north of the Mason-Dixon line," he said, smiling broadly at the distinction.