Eugene Bondurant Sledge was born November 4, 1923, in Mobile, Alabama, son of Edward Simmons Sledge and Mary Frank Sturdivant Sledge. He graduated from Murphy High School in Mobile in May of 1942, and entered Marion Military Institute (MMI) in Marion, Alabama, that Fall. Sledge enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps in December 1942 at MMI and after flunking out of the V-12 officer training program at Georgia Tech, he went through USMC boot camp in San Diego, received adcanced training as a 60mm mortarman, and was eventually assigned to Company K, 3rd Battalion, 5th Regiment, 1st Marine Division (K-3-5) with the rank of Private First Class. He served in the Pacific Theater of World War II, where he saw action at the battles of Peleliu and Okinawa in 1944 and 1945. Sledge performed postwar occupation duty with his unit in Beijin, China, before being honorably discharged from service in 1946 at the rank of corporal.

After the war, Sledge attended Alabama Polytechnic Institute (now Auburn University) where he received a Bachelor of Science degree in business administration in the summer of 1949. In 1952 he married Jeanne Arcenaux of Mobile. He returned to Auburn in 1953 where he worked as a research assistant until 1955; that same year he graduated from A.P.I. with a Master of Science degree in Botany. From 1956 to 1960 he attended the University of Florida and worked as a research assistant. In 1957 the Sledges had a son, John. Sledge received his doctorate in biology from the University of Florida in 1960. He was employed by the Division of Plant Industries for the Florida State Department of Agriculture from 1959 to 1962. In the summer of 1962, Dr. Sledge was appointed Assistant Professor of Biology at Alabama College (now the University of Montevallo). In 1965 a second son, Henry, was born. In 1970, Sledge became a professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Montevallo, a position he held until his retirement in 1990. His research specialized in nematodes and their effects on crops and tress.

In 1981, Dr. Sledge published an account of his experiences during the Second World War in a book entitled With the Old Breed: at Peleliu and Okinawa. With the Old Breed is now widely recognized as a classic war memoir.

Dr. Sledge died on March 3, 2001 of stomach cancer. A second memoir, China Marine: An Infantryman's Life after World War II, was published posthumously in 2002. In 2007, PBS released a seven-part documentary, The War, which used Sledge’s memoirs as a source. In 2010, HBO broadcast the miniseries The Pacific, also based on With the Old Breed and Sledge’s wartime experiences.