Taking a Sherman up against a tank which outgunned you, was better armored and would not catch fire at the drop of a hat took more courage than I can imagine.
Yep, the Brits called the Sherman "Tommy Cookers" and the Germans called them "Ronsons" because they caught fire so easily.
My father was a medical officer in the 771st Tank Battalion assigned to the 81st Infantry Division (Railsplitters) during the battles of The Bulge and the Ruhr. He never talked about combat in the war until I enlisted in the army in 1968 intending to go into armor. He left no gruesome detail out while trying to talk me out of enlisting (he was too late) or going into armor (he succeeded).
He told my sister not to put the fact that he had 2 Bronze Stars in his obituary but she did anyway. When we opened his safe deposit box and I looked at his War Department form that was the predecessor of the DD214 I found that he did not have 2 Bronze Stars - he had 3. I knew he had a purple heart when he was strafed by a German aircraft but did not know that he was wounded 1 May 1945 exactly 1 week before the war ended - he nearly bought it right at the end.
What many don't know is that many US units, including my father's, were already in Germany when the Battle of the Bulge began and had to be pulled back into Belgium to attack The Bulge from the north.
