Corporal Eugene Bondurant Sledge, A Marine's Story
.png "Corporal Eugene Bondurant Sledge – U.S. Marine, World War II Veteran")
Corporal Eugene Bondurant Sledge, A Marine's Story
Eugene Bondurant Sledge was born on November 4, 1923, in Mobile. He graduated from Murphy High School in 1942 and enrolled at Marion Military Institute that autumn. Despite having suffered rheumatic fever as a child—a condition that initially delayed his eligibility for combat service, Sledge was determined to serve.
In December 1942, he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. He was initially placed in an officer training pipeline and sent to the Georgia Institute of Technology, but fearing that extended training would keep him out of combat for the duration of the war, Sledge deliberately withdrew from the program. He requested a transfer to the infantry and was reassigned to the 5th Marine Regiment as a 60mm mortarman.
Sledge deployed to the Pacific Theater and participated in two of the most brutal battles of the war: the Battle of Peleliu and the Battle of Okinawa. As an infantry Marine, he endured prolonged exposure to combat, extreme conditions, and constant loss, experiences that would profoundly shape the rest of his life.
After Japan’s surrender, Corporal Sledge was assigned to Beijing, where he served in support of the Chiang Kai-shek government during the uneasy postwar transition following Japanese occupation. He completed his military service in February 1946.
Returning home, Sledge enrolled at Auburn University, graduating in 1946 with a bachelor’s degree in business administration and joining Phi Delta Theta. After the war, he found hunting difficult and instead turned to birdwatching, an interest that grew into a lifelong scientific passion.
In 1956, Sledge began graduate studies at the University of Florida, earning a doctorate in biology in 1960. He worked for the Florida State Department of Agriculture, Division of Plant Industry, until returning to Alabama in 1962. There, he taught zoology and ornithology at the University of Montevallo (formerly Alabama College) until his retirement in 1996.
Throughout his life, Sledge wrestled quietly with the psychological toll of combat. Encouraged by his wife, he eventually began writing about his experiences, drawing on notes he had taken during the war in the margins of a pocket-sized Bible. In 1981, he published With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa, widely regarded as one of the most unflinching and important combat memoirs of World War II. The book later appeared in the PBS documentary Peleliu 1944: Horror in the Pacific and served as a primary source for HBO’s The Pacific, in which Sledge was portrayed by Joseph Mazzello.
In 2002, a posthumously published memoir, China Marine, explored his service in Beijing and further reflected on the enduring effects of war.
Corporal Eugene Bondurant Sledge died on March 3, 2001. He is buried at Pine Crest Cemetery.
His legacy endures not only through medals or memory, but through words, patiently written, painfully honest, and offered not to glorify war, but to tell the truth about it.
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About the Author
a.d. elliott is a wanderer, photographer, and storyteller traveling through life
She shares her journeys at Take the Back Roads, explores new reads at Rite of Fancy, and highlights U.S. military biographies at Everyday Patriot.
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