It took 65 years, but David Rohm finally got his Purple Heart today.

The 86-year-old World War II veteran received the medal at a ceremony at the 171st Air Refueling Wing in Coraopolis for injuries sustained bailing out of his crippled B-17 aircraft on March 8th, 1944.

Before an audience of 200 people including his family--and his son, Col. Robi Rohm, watching via video hookup from Afghanistan where he is stationed with the Army--Mr. Rohm received the medal from Brig. Gen. Roy Uptegraff, the Air Refueling Wing's commander.

Gen. Uptegraff said today's ceremony offers "another opportunity to salute the airmen we all know in our time were the greatest generation."

Mr. Rohm thanked him, but demmured. "I am not a hero," he said. "We all had a job to do and we did it."

Immediately captured by German forces upon landing, the young radio operator/gunner had a broken pelvis--but no doctors on the scene to record the fact. In fact, he received no medical care at all for his injuries during his next 14 months as a prisoner of war in two different German prison camps.

The brutal treatment he endured in the camps and during the "German Death March," as U.S. troops from the west and Russians from the east closed in, earned him plenty of medals, but no Purple Heart, because of the absence of medical documentation. But two years ago, at the urging of his five children, Mr. Rohm, of Ross Township, petitioned the Air Force Review Board, and, finally, after providing a personal account of his injury, his request was granted in late December.