i mean glory glory hallelujah glory glory hallelujah
you know it's just it's one of those melodies
isn't it oh absolutely it's impossible not to
know it it feels i don't know important important
exactly it screams american history you know
the civil war his truth is marching on it is
stirring but uh I think we have to admit why
we're here today. We're about to completely ruin
that melody for you. Oh, we are going to absolutely
demolish it because for today's deep dive, we're
talking about a version of the song where the
lyrics are definitely not about truth marching
on. Not even close. No. They're about a rookie
paratrooper, a catastrophic mistake, and, well,
a very long fall. And the lyrics get, shall we
say, specific. It's called Blood on the Risers.
Blood on the Risers. And, you know, the thing
that really hooked me when we were digging into
the source material, it's not just shock value.
We have all these records from Fort Benning,
technical manuals. Right. And they all point
to the song being, weirdly, a survival tool.
That is exactly the mission for this deep dive.
It's so easy to just hear the gory gory part
and dismiss it, but we want to explore how this
incredibly dark song actually works as a critical
cautionary tale. A masterclass on what not to
do. Exactly. It's about safety, preparation,
and the psychology of facing extreme risk. All
set to a tune you can't forget. So if you're
a bit squeamish, this is your official heads
up. We're about to jump in. And to really get
it, you have to start with the music's history.
Its lineage is a whole story in itself. Right,
because I started off humming the Battle Hymn
of the Republic, but that wasn't the beginning,
was it? No, that was already a rewrite. You have
to go back to the Civil War, to the Union soldiers.
They were marching to that melody, but they were
singing John Brown's Body. John Brown's Body.
Yeah. So gritty political. Very. It's about a
radical abolitionist body moldering in the grave.
It's earthy. It's rough. And then Julia Ward
Howe hears it and she elevates it. She turns
it into this lofty, religious, almost transcendent
hymn. The Battle Hymn of the Republic. All about
glory and divine judgment. And then 80 years
later. World War II. World War II. And a brand
new Taika soldier, the paratrooper. Gets her
hands on it. And they just drag it right back
down to earth. Literally and figuratively. Yeah.
They take this hymn about spiritual glory and
turn it into a step -by -step guide to physical
destruction. Let's talk about that chorus. I
mean, the switch is just so blunt. It's cynical,
almost. Glory, glory, hallelujah becomes. Glory,
glory, what a hell of a way to die. And the punchline,
his truth is marching on, gets replaced with
the coldest possible take. you ain't gonna jump
no more it's so final and what struck me looking
at the lyrics you sent over is that it's not
just a chant it's a story it's a completely linear
narrative yeah it follows this rookie paratrooper
from sitting in the plane to the jump the failure
the panic the fall and the aftermath it gets
very uh very descriptive about the aftermath
as it does the ambulance crew scraping them up
it's all in there which brings me back to your
point How is that a cautionary tale? It sounds
more like a horror story. Well, this is where
you have to read it like an accident report.
The song is actually an instructional guide on
what not to do. It hammers home that in the airborne,
the line between living and dying is just one
tiny mistake. Okay, so let's deconstruct the
disaster. The song is very clear about why he
died. It's not combat. No, not at all. The sources
point out he does almost everything right. The
lyrics say he counted long, he counted loud,
he's following his training. But he makes one
single... Fatal error. He forgets to hook up
his static line. That's it. That's the moment.
Everything else is just a consequence of that
one action. Okay, so for those of us listening
who aren't paratroopers, we need to break this
down. A static line isn't just like a piece of
string. Not even close. See, in sports skydiving,
you pull a ripcord, you're in control. In World
War II military jumping, the plane opens your
parachute for you. How does that work mechanically?
Okay, so you have this long strap, the static
line, attached to your parachute pack. The other
end has a hook. Before you jump, you hook that
onto a steel cable that runs down the inside
of the plane. So you're literally attached to
the airplane. For a second, yes. When you jump,
your body falls, that line pulls tight, and the
tension yanks the cover off your parachute and
pulls the canopy out. Then the line breaks away.
It's an automatic deployment. So if you don't
hook that line up... Nothing happens. The pack
on your back stays shut. You're just... That
is a terrifying thought. And the song really
captures that, doesn't it? The verse about him
waiting for the shock. Yeah, that jolt of the
canopy opening. He feels the wind, he feels the
cold, but he never feels the shock. And you can
imagine that dawning horror. 1 ,000, 2 ,000,
3 ,000. Nothing. But wait, he's still alive.
He's in free fall. And the song says he pulls
his reserve chute. I mean, that sounds like the
right move. In theory, yes. Plan A failed, so
you go to plan B. But this is the next warning
in the song. He deploys the reserve, but is in
a bad falling position. And this is specific
to the gear they were using back then, right?
Very specific to the T5 and T7 rigs of the 1940s.
Today, your reserve is usually on your back with
your main. But back then, the reserve was a completely
separate pack on your chest. The belly bag. The
belly bag, exactly. So picture it. He's tumbling.
No main chute to stabilize him. He's flailing,
probably spinning. And in all that chaos, he
pulls the handle on the pack on his stomach.
Right. And because he's unstable, the little
pilot chute doesn't catch clean air and fly away
from him. It just, it wraps around him. And the
lyrics say he becomes entangled in the parachute's
canopy and risers. He essentially gift wraps
himself in his own safety equipment. The reserve
deploys, but it can't inflate. It becomes a shroud.
And we should probably define that term from
the title, risers. What are they? Good point.
The risers are the four heavy -duty straps that
connect all the parachute suspension lines, the
strings, to the harness on your shoulders. They're
the load -bearing connection. So the very things
meant to connect him to safety are what? entangle
him. Precisely. The song is a chain of errors.
If he hooked the static line, he lives. If he'd
stabilized his fall before pulling the reserve,
he might have lived. It's not just he died, it's
he died because of X, then Y, then Z. It really
is a crash report set to music. And that's why
it was so effective. It was a mnemonic device.
Hook up, check your gear, don't panic. So who
wrote this? This masterpiece of macabre instruction.
That's the thing. No one knows. The author is
listed as unattributed pretty much everywhere.
That kind of feels right, doesn't it? Like it
just emerged out of the barracks. And the leading
theory is that it was a collective creation written
verse by verse, probably by trainees at Fort
Benning. The home of the infantry. Yeah, you
can picture it. Guys in a barracks one -upping
each other with a new grizzlier line. And then
they took that song with them. The sources describe
them singing it on the plane right before a jump.
That's the part that just blows my mind. You're
about to do one of the most dangerous things
a human can do, and you're singing about it going
horribly wrong. It's what some psychologists
call psychological inoculation. Like a vaccine.
Exactly like a vaccine. You give yourself a small,
controlled dose of the fear. By singing about
the worst possible outcome, you're facing it.
You're owning it. You're turning it into a rhythm
you can control. You're laughing at it. Like,
you can't scare me. I'm already singing about
it. Precisely. And it builds this incredible
unit cohesion. We're the guys who sing about
death. And it wasn't a secret either. We found
newspaper clippings from 43 -44 calling it a
paratrooper favorite. And that culture. I mean,
it didn't just end in 1945. This song has had
some serious legs. It absolutely has. It's part
of the airborne identity. You go to the 82nd
Airborne, the 173rd Airborne, they all know this
song. The notes here also mention the 101st Airborne,
the Screaming Eagles, but there's a funny bit
of rivalry mentioned. Yes, a little bit of military
inside baseball. It says that even though they're
associated with the song, they're colloquially
known as legs. Right. So legs is the classic
paratrooper insult for anyone who isn't airborne
qualified, anyone who has to walk. But before
you're a first first. They're legends. They are.
But back in WWII, a lot of their forces were
glider infantry, not parachutists. And today
they're primarily an air assault division using
helicopters. So the pure static line guys and
other units still like to give them a hard time
about it. So they still get called legs even
while they're singing the ultimate paratrooper
anthem. Exactly. But it shows how the song kind
of transcends those little rivalries. It's for
everyone in that high -risk fraternity. And it's
not just an American thing. It's gone global.
Yeah, that's what's so fascinating. Gravity and
dark humor are universal, it seems. What are
some of the other versions? Well, in Spain, it's
called Sangre en las Cuerdas. Blood on the lines.
Same idea. In a lot of Latin American countries,
their airborne units call it Mancha Roja. Red
stain. Wow. That's efficient. Gets the point
across, doesn't it? British airborne units sing
it too. It's just a core part of that culture
worldwide. And we can't talk about its legacy
without mentioning Band of Brothers. Of course
not. That miniseries put paratrooper culture
on the map for a whole new generation. They sing
it in the show and it just perfectly captures
that gallows humor. But there's a more recent
story that I just love. The story of Vince Baranza.
What a great story. He was a genuine WWII vet
from the 101st Battle of the Bulge. A real hero.
And in 2019, a video of him pops up online. And
he's not just telling a story. No. He's in Bastogne,
I believe, surrounded by people, and he just
launches into blood on the riser. He's belting
it out. With everything he's got. The video got
over a million views. It's this incredible bridge
from the 1940s to the YouTube era. You see this
man in his 90s, and for that moment, he's 20
years old again. It's not just a song. It's a
memory. And he even went on to record it. He
did. Just an amazing testament to how deep this
stuff runs. So it's in movies, video games. It's
really become the cultural shorthand for paratroopers.
It has. If you want to show a character as a
tough, fatalistic airborne soldier, you have
them hum gory, gory. It sets the scene instantly.
All right, let's bring this in for a safe landing.
A much safer one, I hope. We've gone from this
noble Civil War hymn to a grisly checklist about
static lines, all the way to a viral video of
a veteran. It's been a journey. And I think the
big takeaway, the so what of all this, is about
the function of dark humor. Because it can sound
so disrespectful from the outside. It really
can. But it's not about disrespecting the dead.
It's about acknowledging the lethal reality of
the job so you can function. You have to look
the gory, gory part right in the eye. You sing
about it, you face it. And then you check your
static line one more time because you are not
going to be the guy in the song. it turns this
terrifying thing into a rhythm you can march
to. Right. It takes individual fear and makes
it a collective chant, a resolve, which got me
thinking, we don't really have anything like
this in modern civilian life. Not really, no.
We have instruction manuals. We don't have instructional
anthems. Exactly. I mean, if this song is a survival
checklist set to music, what are our modern versions?
What mantras do we use to remember life -saving
steps? That's a great question. We have phone
reminders and checklists, but we've kind of lost
that art of the cautionary anthem. Maybe we have.
Imagine a catchy song about checking your blind
spot before you change lanes. Or, I don't know,
about the dangers of hitting reply all. Gory,
gory, I hit send. Something to think about, I
guess. The next time you find yourself humming
a tune. And whatever you're doing, please just
remember to hook up the static line. Words to
live by. Thanks for listening to this deep dive.
Stay safe.