I believe you’re right; but the Mercury flights were the hardest, if memory serves, around 5 g’s, while the Shuttle flight is under 3 g’s. Apollo’s kick in the pants got bigger with each succeeding stage. The Saturn V’s job was to lift every bit of mass needed for the entire lunar mission (there and back, including a landing and launch on the lunar surface) off the ground and get it high enough where the subsequent stages could finish the direct ascent. That was a hell of a piece of machinery.
I was lucky to have gotten to know Jim McDivitt a little when I was a kid because he had business dealings with my grandfather.. I was awestruck.
He was an early rocket jock who commanded both the Gemini 4 first space walk mission and the Apollo 9 flight in which the Lunar Module was tested for the first time in earth orbit.
He pushed me down in a chair in his office to show me what a launch was like.