Courage or Stupidity? (Ch. 8)

The men fighting in Vietnam must have had some courage because no person without it would last that long in a war torn area. This comes to mind when I read this chapter because Curt Lemon, a soldier, let his lack of courage in one small area that did not matter in war override his judgement. I think that maybe he found his fear of dentists emasculating or something because he let that poison him. He fainted, but that was too much for him. The embarrassment he faced from fighting squashed his phobia of dentists and he went in to have a perfectly good tooth yanked out. Now is that courage, the courage to face his fear again and go through with it? Or, is that stupidity, the stupidity to let embarrassment cloud his judgement and possibly allow an infection to take hold in a perfectly healthy spot? I am not sure because I have faced my fear of heights many times to try to cure my phobia, but I do think harming healthy tissue is stupid.