Blood on the Risers
Blood on the Risers is a song popular among US paratroopers.
Stats
Lyrics
According to Never Give Up the Jump (2023) by Susan Gurwell Talley and Jack L. Talley, the song was originally titled “Johnny Paratrooper”.[1]
Johnny Paratrooper
There was blood upon the risers,
There was blood upon the chute,
There was blood that came a-trickling
down the Paratrooper’s Boot.
As he lie there in the welter of his gore;
He ain’t gonna jump no more!
CHORUS:
Gory, Gory, Paratrooper
Gory, Gory, Paratrooper
Gory, Gory, Paratrooper
What a Helluva way to die!
Is everybody happy, cried the Sgt. looking up.
Our hero feebly answered yes, and then they stood him up.
He jumped out into the blast
He ducked and grasped reserve.
He ain’t gonna jump no more!
CHORUS:
He counted loud, he counted long,
He waited for the shock.
He felt the wind, he felt the clouds,
He felt the awful drop.
He pulled the cord, the silk spilled out
and wrapped around his legs.
He ain’t gonna jump no more!
CHORUS:
The lines were twisted around his neck
Connectors broke his dome!
The risers tied themselves in knots,
around each skinny bone.
The canopy became his shroud
as he hurtled to the ground.
He ain’t gonna jump no more!
CHORUS:
The days he lived and laughed and loved
kept running through his mind.
He thought about the medics and
he wondered what they’d find.
He thought about the girl,
the one he left behind.
He ain’t gonna jump no more!
CHORUS:
The ambulance was on the spot.
The jeeps were running wild.
The medics jumped and screamed with glee,
and rolled their sleeves and smiled.
For it had been a week or more
since last a chute had failed.
He ain’t gonna jump no more.
CHORUS:
He hit the ground, the sound was “SPLOT”,
the blood went spurting high.
His comrades then were heard to say: A pretty way to die.
They picked him up still in his chute,
and poured him from his boots.
He ain’t gonna jump no more.
CHORUS:
History
- 1943: Song written by J.D. Kelley, Jr. and Herbert Malloy at Camp Blanding, Florida, in honor of a Joseph Singletary.[1]
See also
External links
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Susan Gurwell Talley; Jack L. Talley. (2023). “Never Give up the Jump”. Permuted Press, New York. OCLC: 1355221256. ISBN (eBook): 9781637584293. “Two 508th troopers penned the words to the now-famous “Johnny Paratrooper.” Full of black humor and sung with (often drunken) bravado, the words could be all too real, as green paratroopers would soon find out. We discovered the version below, printed on the back of a regimental boxing program, dated January 11, 1943, among Dad’s documents. It is the earliest copy we know of, reproduced with all original capitalization and punctuation intact. The 82nd Airborne still uses the lyrics as a cadence when marching today. The song is also known as “Blood on the Risers,” sung to the tune of “Battle Hymn of the Republic”. … Rick Smith from 508th PIR HqHq, Reenacted, has located a document from the estate of First Sgt. (later Lt) J.D. Kelley, Jr. that attributes the authorship of the song to Kelley and Herbert Malloy, in 1943, at Camp Blanding, FL, in honor of Joseph Singletary. Records from the 508th indeed place Kelley at Camp Blanding in early 1943. (Source: daughter Trish McLoud).”.
Footnotes
