Eugene Bondurant Sledge was born on November 4, 1923, in Mobile, Alabama, to Edward Simmons Sledge, a physician, and Mary Frank "Sturdivant" Sledge, dean of women students at Huntingdon College. He graduated from Murphy High School in Mobile in the spring of 1942. His older brother, Edward Simmons Sledge II, was born on September 10, 1920, and enlisted in the United States Army. He went on to serve in the Western European theater, left the Army with the rank of Major and died on September 23, 1985. Eugene was a sickly child and 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 close childhood friend Sidney Phillips also wrote to Sledge from Guadalcanal and urged him to not join anything.