It was a day of unearthly beauty and unimaginable brutality, one that 86-year-old World War II veteran David Rohm remembers "like the day I was born."

On March 8, 1944, the then-21-year-old U.S. Army Air Corps tech sergeant, crippled with a broken pelvis, floated to earth in his parachute after his B-17 aircraft was shot down by German forces.

"It was the most beautiful day, not a cloud in the sky," Mr. Rohm, of Ross, recalled, "and I found myself, all of a sudden, in a strange country where I didn't understand the language and couldn't speak the language -- and there was this mob coming towards me."

Thus began a story of bravery, suffering and forbearance that was finally, officially recognized yesterday, 65 years later, when Mr. Rohm was awarded the Purple Heart at a ceremony at the 171st Air Refueling Wing at Pittsburgh International Airport.

With an audience of more than 200 people looking on -- including his son, U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Robert Rohm, watching via video hookup from Afghanistan where he is stationed -- Mr. Rohm received the medal from Brig. Gen. Roy Uptegraff, the Air Refueling Wing's commander.

Gen. Uptegraff noted that Mr. Rohm spent 14 months in two prison camps without medical care and endured brutal treatment during the notorious "shoe leather express" death march across Germany in early 1945 as Allied and Soviet forces closed in from the west and east.

After the war, the young radio operator/gunner earned plenty of medals, but no Purple Heart, because no doctors were on the scene to record his injuries when he landed in that field near Magdeburg, Germany.

During a daylight bombing mission his plane came under fire by two German fighters, which disabled two of the plane's four engines and set it on fire.

After he bailed from the plane, his parachute suddenly opened, snapping his pelvis. Mr. Rohm landed in a scene filled with horror.

Local villagers, furious about bombing raids on nearby Berlin, "were lynching the guys who landed in the trees before me," he said.

When he saw the mob approaching him, he wriggled out of his parachute and, in terrible pain, stumbled away --right into the arms of two German soldiers, who led him to a prison camp where he was placed in solitary confinement.

His mother, Ada, did get word that he'd been taken prisoner, but never would see him released, dying suddenly during the war of a heart attack at age 50. Mr. Rohm's 87-year-old sister Elva Fisher, of Westview, said she remembered the day she heard her younger brother was missing in action.

"I was working at the quartermaster's office at Chanute Field in Illinois," she said. "They told me the news and I was upset, of course, but then this fellow, Johnny Vota, another airman, came up to me, took off the silver wings on his uniform and gave them to me. He told me, 'These will remind you of your brother. He's going to be fine.'

"I've never forgotten that."

After the war, Mr. Rohm's family asked the Air Corps to award him a Purple Heart, given to members of the U.S. military who have been injured or killed in combat. But because there was no medical documentation of his injuries -- he didn't have an X-ray when he was examined prior to his release from the military in 1945 -- his request was denied.

Mr. Rohm returned to Pittsburgh, became an insurance company safety engineer, married and had five children. He also struggled to move on, suffering from nightmares for years afterwards.

After going through a counseling program for prisoners of war, "he found it easier to talk about his experiences," said his wife, Rose Marie Rohm, 83. "It really helped him so much, because there were other veterans who had gone through what he went through."

The pain from his pelvis injury persisted. At the urging of his son, Lt. Col. Rohm, Mr. Rohm petitioned the military three years ago to consider his case, only to be denied again. But he persisted, and in late December was notified that he would be awarded a Purple Heart.

"We aren't sure what happened," said another of his sons, Michael Rohm, 47, of Cranberry. "But somehow, someone or some people assumed he was telling the truth."

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

Mr. Rohm thanked him with a crisp salute, but in brief remarks afterwards, he noted, "I am not a hero," he said. "We all had a job to do and we did it."

Still, the Purple Heart gives him "peace and closure," Mr. Rohm's wife said.

"He needed this. It's been a long time coming."