When a bad situation occurred we would often say: "with my blood and his guts (Patton) we will win this war". Guts were a relative phenomena. It seemed that guts existed only with lead commanders. As you moved up the chain of command the perceived volume of guts decreased.

I thought my company commander was lacking, but his tank driver tells me at our reunions that I am wrong. And my captain said in a recent letter to me: "if our battalion commander was wounded, it was from shaving".

And so it goes up the line. We heard that Patton swam the Rhine at Nierstein (near Oppenheim), but he only pissed in it, from the same pontoon bridge my platoon used hours or several days earlier. My tank was number six across the bridge while being strafed three times by a Messerschmidt (ME-109).

Where was George when my platoon was surrounded that evening in the second city (Trebur) across the Rhine River? Urinating, I suppose, in front of a crowd of photographers. But everyone at Mortain had guts and a lot of blood was spilled.

a soldier is pointing to a hole in the turret
which is not visible in this photograph

two tanks not very far apart were disabled here
you can see the hole in the turret of the tank in the foreground