Soon, Billy is hospitalized with symptoms similar to post-traumatic stress disorder and placed under psychiatric care at a Veterans Affairs hospital in Lake Placid.

After V-E Day in May 1945, Billy is transferred to the United States and receives his honorable discharge in July 1945. As a result, they are among the few survivors of the firestorm that rages in the city between February 13 and 15, 1945. During the extensive bombing of Dresden by the Allies, German guards hide with the prisoners in the slaughterhouse, which is partially underground and well-protected from the damage on the surface. The Germans hold Billy and his fellow prisoners in an empty slaughterhouse called Schlachthof-fünf ('slaughterhouse five'). By 1945, the prisoners have arrived in the German city of Dresden to work in 'contract labor' (forced labor). Billy and the other prisoners are transported into Germany. Lazzaro vows to avenge Weary's death by killing Billy, because revenge is 'the sweetest thing in life'.Īt this exact time, Billy becomes 'un-un-unstuck in time' and has flashbacks from his former and future life. While dying in a rail car full of prisoners, Weary convinces fellow soldier Paul Lazzaro that Billy is to blame for his death. Weary eventually succumbs to gangrene caused by wounds from the stiff clogs. When the two are captured, the Germans confiscate everything Weary has and force him to wear painful wooden clogs. Before he is captured, he meets Roland Weary, a patriot, warmonger, and sadistic bully who derides Billy's cowardice. Billy nearly dies due to a string of events. He is transferred from a base in South Carolina to the front line in Luxembourg during the Battle of the Bulge.

He writes about Billy Pilgrim, an American man from the fictional town of Ilium, New York, who believes he was held in an alien zoo on the fictional planet of Tralfamadore and has experienced time travel.Īs a chaplain's assistant in the United States Army during World War II, Billy is an ill-trained, disoriented, and fatalistic American soldier who finds he does not like war and refuses to fight. The story is told in a non-linear order, and events become clear through flashbacks and time travel experiences from the unreliable narrator, who begins the novel by writing 'All of this happened, more or less.' The narrator spends the first chapter describing his writing of the book, his experiences as a University of Chicago anthropology student and a Chicago City News Bureau correspondent, his research on the Children's Crusade and the history of Dresden, and his visit to Cold War-era Europe with his war friend Bernard V.

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