Eugene Bondurant Sledge was born on November 4, 1923, in Mobile, Alabama, the youngest of two children. His father, Edward Simmons Sledge, a physician, and Mary Frank Sturdivant Sledge, Dean of Women at Huntingdon College. Eugene attended Murphy High School and graduated in the spring of 1942.

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In the fall of 1942, Eugene enrolled in the Marion Military Institute, in Marion, Alabama, but then chose to volunteer for the U.S. Marine Corps in December 1942. He was placed in the V-12 officer training program and was sent to the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he and half of his detachment "flunked out" so they would be allowed to serve their time as enlistees and not "miss the war”.