Blood on the Risers

An Airborne Soldier's Thirty-five Months in Vietnam

By: John Leppelman

Narrated by: Scott Sowers

In three straight years he was a paratropper, and army seaman, and a LRRP—and he lived to tell about it.

As an FNG paratrooper in the 173d Airborne, John Leppelman made that unit's only combat jump in Vietnam. Then he spent months in fruitless search of the enemy, watching as his buddies died because of poor leadership and lousy weapons. Often it seemed the only way out of the carnage in the Central highlands was in a body bag.

But Leppelman did get out, transferring first to the army's riverboats and then the all-volunteer Rangers, one of the ballsiest units in the war. In three tours of duty, that ended only when malaria forced him back to the States, Leppelman saw the war as few others did, a Vietnam that many American boys didn't live to tell about, but whose valor and sacrifice survive on these pages.

Read the full book.

I bought this without reading the fine print. I read the book in the 90s and then had the audio book on cassette in the mid 2000s. I didn’t realize I was getting the abridged version. This is a decent preview of the actual book but it’s disjointed and choppy if you know the whole story.

I was there!

This is a great mini-book.
Great narration
Great performance
Great writing
This is a very good book! I felt like I was in just for a moment. Well written and well performed. Thank you to Leppormon!

Missing Chapters

The written book is much more interesting. The Audible should go on for about 20 hours to cover the written version. Very disappointed.

Intriguing & Exciting.

I liked the details provided about the reality about the Vietnam War as a soldier.

Great book, sadly audible version is abridged

This is a fantastic book, having read it a few times years before. Wanting to try the audible version, i was saddened to find they left out huge amounts from the printed version. Do yourselves a favor and read the book. Audible version was done well, narrator has a great voice - but they left out way to much of the story.