American service members have often spent their holidays away from loved ones — and in harm’s way — and the men who found themselves in the besieged Belgian city of Bastogne just before Christmas of 1944 were no exception.

Bastogne, which sits just a few miles from the border of Luxembourg, had been under German control since May of 1940 and had only been liberated by Allied troops a few months earlier in September — and much of the 101st Airborne Division remained in and around the cit