The Dark Angel Turned Away

The second time Ray Zuker came face to face with the imminent prospect of death, his thoughts turned inward to question why he survived the first time in the flak studded skies of Germany, and the effect that experience had on the rest of his life. That same feeling of dread appears again forty years later when the dark angel reappears. Faced with emergency Triple A surgery, Ray Zuker at age 64, remembers his 21st bombing mission in August 1944 when he was visited by the feeling of certainty that he would not survive. Zuker with his son Fred deftly tell the story of how a 21-year-old from farm country in central Michigan became the senior pilot on B-24 and B-17 heavy bombers flying out of Sudbury, Suffolk, England. He wrote a memoir of how his early life prepared him to be a bomber pilot in WWII, how he and his crew managed to survive when so many did not, and how these two important events, separated by forty years, are tied together.Comments on the first, self-published version of the book include: Better than a lot of autobiographies of the war I have read. Can’t wait to see the movie.
Excellent work of literature. Put me in the action of the war and feelings of one American pilot. Great sense of humor exhibited. ‘Tell it like it is’ philosophy made the book crackle with realism. Thanks Ray. I’ll never forget it or you.