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Military Background.
Billy, unfit for actual combat, is a chaplain's assistant for an Army regiment in Germany. His entire unit had been bombed, leaving only him alive. He joined others similarly stranded soldiers and decides to stick with them. During his party's march back to the Allied front, he "becomes unstuck in time" for the first time. He travels back to sometime in his childhood, when he's first learning to swim. -
Future Assination
Billy and his fellow POWs get on a train finally headed for Dresden. One POW, Lazzaro, tells Billy that Roland died because of him, and that he was going to hire a hitman. Billy remembers having witnessed his own death gets killed on February 13, 1976 during his speaking tour of Chicago on the Tralfamadorians and the true nature of time. As soon as his speech ends, he gets sniped by a high-powered laser rifle, fired by Lazzaro's hitman. -
Air-Raid
During a lecture given by an American Nazi to the POWs to convince them to join the cause, Dresden's air raid sirens go off. 100 or so Americans and their guards flee to the underground meat locker. The next day, people are killed and the entire city is burned down. The narrator says the ruins look like the moon. Nothing but bleached white minerals. -
Ironic City
You needn't worry about bombs, by the way. Dresden is an open city. It is undefended, and contains no war industries or troop concentrations of any importance. This line is given by an English POW to the Americans just before they're put on the train and shipped out. Of course, as Billy and the audience already know, Dresden is bombed to almost nothing in about a month. -
Military Discharge
Billy is honorably discharged from the military, returns to Ilium, and marries the daughter of the founder of the Ilium School of Optometry. -
Flashback
Billy is elected president of the Lions Club. Suddenly, he blinks and is in 1944 again, about to be severely beaten by the party member who hadn't abandoned him, Roland Weary. -
More Time Travel
1958
Billy blinks in 1965 and finds himself in 1958, at a banquet for Ilium's little league baseball team, in which his son Robert is a member. -
Known Abduction
Billy is abducted by Tralfamadorians. Knowing exactly when he'll be abducted, he decides to watch a movie an hour before the abduction. The movie plays backward. After spending a few years on board the flying saucer, he has this conversation with one of the captors, out being like a bug in amber and how humans are so violent, and explain everything. -
Plane Crash/ NYC Trip
Billy is involved in a plane crash in Vermont that kills everyone on board except him. This is the first time Kurt Vonnegut, the author, uses the phrase "so it goes. drives to NYC to be on a late-night radio talk show, where he discusses how he came unstuck in time. He also discusses how, in 1967, he was abducted by a race of fourth-dimensional aliens called "Tralfamadorians" and put in one of their zoos. -
Back to Work
As soon as Billy goes back to work at his optometry office, he gets escorted out by security after he tells a patient his seemingly crazy story of being abducted by aliens who live in four dimensions.
