A Briton and three Americans are to be awarded France’s highest honour – the Légion d’honneur – by the president, Francois Hollande, on Monday for their roles in stopping a suspected terrorist attack on a train.

Briton Chris Norman helped US fellow passengers Spencer Stone, Anthony Sadler and Alek Skarlatos as they wrestled a suspected jihadi gunman to the ground after he opened fire on the train travelling from Amsterdam to Paris. Norman said he thought: “OK, I’m probably going to die anyway so let’s go.”

The 62-year-old businessman was reportedly born in Uganda and raised in South Africa, but holds a British passport. He went to the University of Reading, before moving to the south of France and running a business as an IT consultant to companies in Africa.

He told reporters that, once he got over his initial fear when the gunman emerged and opened fire, he decided to act, telling himself: “I would rather die being active trying to get him down than simply sit in the corner and be shot.” His wife told the newspaper of her pride that he had intervened.

Norman, who was pictured holding a bravery award from the town of Arras – near to which the train was passing when the incident occurred – told a media conference: “I was sitting in the coach. I heard a shot, I heard some glass breaking then I saw somebody running down the aisle to the front of the train.

“I was facing towards the back and then a stood up to see what was happening. I saw a man with what I think was an AK-47 or something like a machine gun. My first reaction was to sit down and hide. Then I heard one guy, an American, say, ‘Go get him.’ I heard another American say, ‘Don’t you do that, buddy.’

“I decided then perhaps it was really the only time or chance to act as a team and try to take the terrorist. It was rapid reasoning. He had a Kalashnikov, he had a magazine full and I didn’t know how many magazines he had.”

US soldier Spencer Stone on stopping French train gunman: ‘I put him in a chokehold’ Guardian

The three US friends, who grew up together in California, had been snoozing in their first-class seats on Friday evening when they heard a noise that sounded like shattered glass behind them and saw a shirtless man coming into the carriage with a Kalashnikov. Spencer Stone, a 6ft 2in off-duty airman and martial arts fan, took the biggest risk as he ran forward 10 metres to tackle him.

“I just woke up from a deep sleep and Alek was sitting next to me,” Stone said. “I turned around and I saw [the gunman] had an AK47 and it looked like it was jammed – he was trying to charge the weapon. Alek just hit me on the shoulder and said ‘Let’s go!’ And I ran down, tackled him, Alek ran up and grabbed the gun out of his hand while I put him in a chokehold.

“[The gunman] just kept pulling out more weapons. He pulled out a handgun, Alek took that. He took out a box cutter and started stabbing at me with that. We started punching him while he was in the middle of us, just grabbed him and hit him unconscious while Alek was hitting him in the head with a pistol or a rifle – I can’t really remember.”

In the struggle, the 25-year-old Moroccan suspect, Ayoud El-Khazzani, wielded a box-cutter and Stone, who is stationed at Lajes airbase in the Azores, almost had his thumb sliced off. Medics stitched it back on to his hand after the confrontation.

Asked to describe El-Khazzani, who is still being questioned by security officials, Stone said: “He seemed like he was ready to fight to the end. So were we.” Stone and his friends tied up El-Khazzani with the help of Norman, who took the gunman’s right arm and used his tie as a rope, and an off-duty French train driver, who held down the other arm.

A 51-year-old man with dual French-US nationality who had earlier tried to intercept the gunman had been badly shot and was bleeding profusely. “I just went over and saw that he was pouring blood from his neck,” Stone said. “I was going to use my shirt first but I realised that wasn’t going to work, so I just stuck two of my fingers into the hole, found what I thought to be the artery, pushed down and the bleeding stopped. So I just said, ‘Thank God’ and held that position til the parademics came.” The train came to an emergency stop at Arras station in northern France, where police arrested El-Khazzani.