Eugene Sledge

(1923 - 2001)

Worried about missing World War II, Eugene Sledge volunteered to join the Marine Corps in 1942 before completing his studies at the Marion Military Institute in Alabama. He earned a PhD in biology in 1960. Paul Fussell called Sledge’s 1981 book With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa “one of the finest memoirs to emerge from any war.” A character based on Sledge, played by the actor Joseph Mazzello, appeared in the 2010 miniseries The Pacific.