- Billy Pilgrim is born in 1922 in Ilium, New York (not a real place, by the way).
- He attends a semester of night classes at the Ilium School of Optometry (eye doctor school) before being drafted for World War II.
- During the War, his father dies in a hunting accident. Say it with us: so it goes.
- He is taken prisoner by the Germans and honorably discharged from the U.S. Army in 1945.
- Once he gets back to the States, he goes back to night school, gets engaged, and then has a mild mental breakdown.