Eugene Sledge (4 November 1923 – 3 March 2001) was a US Marine Corps Corporal, university professor, and author. He served in the US 1st Marine Division and fought one of the most brutal battles of the pacific theater during World War II such as the Battle of Peleliu and Okinawa. His 1981 memoir With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa chronicled his combat experiences.
Biography[]
Sledge was born on November 4, 1923, in Mobile, Alabama, to Edward Sledge, a physician and World War l veteran, and Mary Sledge, dean of women students at Huntingdon College. He was also the great-grandson of Confederate officer who fought in the American Civil War. As a teenager, he graduated from Murphy High School in Mobile in the spring of 1942. His older brother, Edward Simmons Sledge II, enlisted in the US Army and serve in the Western European theater, as a Tanker and earned the rank of Major. Eugene was a very sick child and only lost two years of schooling due to rheumatic fever and this condition left him with a heart murmur. However once the condition subsided, his family encouraged him to enroll in college rather than join the military. His best-friend Sidney Phillips also wrote to Sledge from Guadalcanal and told him not to join anything.
Military Service[]
When Eugene’s heart murmur went away, he immediately decides to enlist in the Marines. His father speaks against it, and told to him that even if Eugene does not get physically scarred, he might be scarred and emotionally damage beyond repair, just like the veterans of “The Great War”. However, his father relents and lets Sledge enlist in fall of 1942, and begin training for combat as a mortarman. Sledge originally enrolled in the Marion Military Institute, in Marion, Alabama, and was also placed in the V-12 officer training program and was sent to the Georgia Institute of Technology but changed his mind because he claimed that he didn’t want to "miss the war". During his time in bootcamp, he befriends Bill Leyden and Robert Oswalt and the three were station at a Marine island base at Pavuvu where the three met veterans Cpl. R.V. Burgin and PFC. Merriell Shelton nicknamed "Snafu" who fought in the Battle of Cape Gloucester, including PFC. Robert Leckie and his friends. Sledge and Leyden later meet more veterans in their unit, a Private named Jay De L'Eau, who finds them a bunk after Snafu denies the new recruits beds in theirs. He is later reunited with Sid, who has noticeably changed since he last saw him, greeting Sledge with a tussle. This is seen by Capt. Andrew Haldane and his Lieutenant, Edward Jones. Sledge and Sid talk at the beach, where Sid shows just how much innocence he had lost in during Guadalcanal and Cape Gloucester. The next day Eugene tries to talk to Sid again, but Sid has already left, it is believed that Sledge talked to Robert Leckie about religion, to which the latter reveals his abandonment of Christianity; however, there was no actual evidence of the two men actually meeting in person.
The First one[]
On September 18, 1944, Sledges had his first taste of combat during the beach landings of Peleliu but realizes it is not what he expected. It took the ability for him to get off the beach, and his unit was next seen using the mortar on Type 95 Ha-Go Japanese tank, missing several times before the tank finally bursts into flames by an M4 Sherman. Afterwards, the US 1st Marine Division launched an attack on the Peleliu Airfield, where Sledge’s mortar squad takes out several Imperial Japanese soldiers in a partially destroyed building. When they moved out, Sledge is newly christened "Sledgehammer" by Snafu, showing his acceptance into the marines. Until the Battle of Bloody Nose Ridge, where he loses yet more of his himself as he sees Leyden getting blown back by a grenade explosion, Jones was shot and killed by the Japanese, leaving both GySgt. Elmo "Gunny" Haney and De L'Eau traumatized, and lost Haldane during the last days of the battle. When the Allies Forces took Peleliu, the first marines boarded a ship headed for Pavuvu, Sledge received a lighter with the US 1st Marine Division symbol on it from Haney.
Eugene Sledge during the final days of the Okinawan campaign.
Okinawa[]
After surviving his experiences on Peleliu, Sledge's unit is eventually called upon once again to assist in the Battle of Okinawa, where he, Burgin, Sheldon and Leyden who recovered from his wounds from Peleliu meet up with two replacements: Pvts. Noah Hamm and Tony "Kathy" Peck. Sledge assists in leading the replacements, all the while showing just how much he is losing himself when he mercifully killed a wounded Japanese soldier even after a cease-fire with his M1917 revolver. Some time into the campaign, Leyden is once again blown back by a motor shell. Eventually, Peck loses his temper and tries to shoot his M1 carbine at far-off Japanese soldiers to kill him. But Instead, he got Hamm killed and Peck is taken to presumably be incarcerated. As the Marines pushed forward, Sheldon and Sledge enter a house where a crying baby and a dying woman are the sole survivors of a mortar shelling. The baby is taken by one of the officers while Sledge finds the woman alone and comforts her, in Sledge's book "The Old Breed", he was trying to get this woman help but another Marine shoot her dead and was berated for that. He then spots a young Okinawan teenager and has a chance to kill him, but denies it, and the teenager is instead killed by one of the other marines. Eventually, the marines leave yet again, with Eugene having gained back some of his humanity. The men were informed that Leyden have survived again and headed back to the states. The destruction of the city of Hiroshima by the atomic bomb was also revealed here as Sledge, Sheldon, and Burgin leave via truck. Later, Sledge is seen celebrating Victory in Japan Day with his friends. Instead of the US 1st Marine Division celebrating World War ll end, they were reassigned to fight the Chinese Communist Party during the Chinese Civil War.
Later life[]
Sledge was discharged from the US Marine Corps in February 1946 with the rank of corporal. He hadn't seen Burgin and Sheldon for 40 years, Sledge attended Auburn University (Before it changed to the Alabama Polytechnic Institute), and received a Bachelor of Science degree in business administration in the summer of 1949. He had a hard time readjusting to civilian life and used to stroll down the streets of Mobile and see people that reminded him of his time at Peleliu and Okinawa. In 1952, Eugene married a woman named Jeanne Arceneaux and the couple have two sons. 18 years later, he became a professor, a position he held until he retired in 1990. He taught Biology, zoology, ornithology, comparative vertebrate anatomy, and other courses during his long tenure there. In 1981, he published With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa, a memoir of his World War II service with the US Marine Corps after his wife beg him in order to help him cope with his traumatic experience. The Old Breed was than reprinted in 1990 (with an introduction by Paul Fussell) and again in 2007 by Victor Davis Hanson. Sledge was really popular with his students, and organized field trips and collections around Mobile. In 1989, he received an honorary degree and earned the rank of colonel from the Marion Military Institute.
Death[]
Eugene Sledge died after a long battle with stomach cancer on March 3, 2001. Hw and was buried next to his Parents and brother at Pine Crest Cemetery in Mobile.
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