Year 1944 (MCMXLIV) was a leap year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar.

Below, events of World War II have the "WWII" prefix.

Eugene Bondurant Sledge (November 4, 1923 – March 3, 2001) was a United States Marine, university professor, and author. His 1981 memoir With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa chronicled his combat experiences during World War II and was subsequently used as source material for Ken Burns's PBS documentary, The War, as well as the HBO miniseries The Pacific, in which he is portrayed by Joseph Mazzello.

Eugene Bondurant Sledge was born on November 4, 1923 and grew up at Georgia Cottage in Mobile, Alabama. The great-grandson of Confederate officers, Sledge was bookish and frail as a child. However, his physician father brought him up to be accustomed to the outdoors. Having learned to fish and hunt from his father, he was fond of venturing outdoors into the woods with Sidney Phillips, his best friend.

After Pearl Harbor was bombed on December 7, 1941, Sledge wished to join the Marines with Phillips. But, according to Phillips he had been delayed in school due to rheumatic fever. A residual rheumatic heart murmur prevented him from joining up at that time and Phillips went off to the recruitment post without him. Sledge graduated from Murphy High School in Mobile in May 1942, and entered Marion Military Institute in Marion, Alabama, that fall.