The Screaming Eagles of the 101st Airborne Division, the fictional Private Ryan's unit, had just finished the battle for the bridge too far, Field Marshal Montgomery's ill-fated Operation Market Garden. As Christmas 1944 approached, the division was settling in for some hard earned rest and recuperation. Then, Hitler ordered a massive Nazi counterattack through the supposedly impenetrable Ardennes Forest.

The author and the rest of the Screaming Eagles were rushed to Bastogne, a small Belgian crossroads town where seven roads met. The lightly-armed paratrooper became 'the cork in the bottle' of the Nazi onslaught; Bastogne became the key to German victory. Private Burgett's memoir (he was not yet twenty years old at the time of the battle) is an exciting and enduring testament to the Screaming Eagles and their epic defense of Bastogne.