NICE, France — Terrorist attacks in France come often enough that they can seem to be variations on a painful pattern: carnage followed by disbelief, then condemnations, condolences, and shrines of flowers, candles and letters for the dead.

Yet to see the attacks only that way is to miss the one element that might buoy the national spirit: In nearly every terrorist episode here, ordinary individuals risked their own safety to try to halt the attack or to lend a hand to the wounded rather than running away. Some of these local heroes are recognized right away, though others never receive recognition and some receive it only belatedly.

“What I saw was horrible, people crushed — it had to be stopped,” said a 48-year-old man named Franck who would not give his surname even after he was decorated by the City of Nice for his effort to stop the driver of a cargo truck that ran over scores of people at a Bastille Day celebration on July 14.

A worker at the Nice airport, Franck, who was on a motor scooter, decided in a split second to chase the truck and when he caught up, rammed it — to no avail — and was knocked off. He got up and ran after the truck, managed to climb onto the running boards and began hitting the driver through the open window. As the driver, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, tried to shoot Franck his gun failed and at the same time, Franck tried to open the door of the truck, then tried climbing through the window, but the driver struck him on the head with the gun and he fell, breaking a rib and badly bruising his back.