Henry Willig (played by Don Thompson) was an United States Marine who served in the Vietnam War. During the conflict, he and his squad were part of a human experiment in which they had part of their brain surgically removed to eliminate the need for sleep in soldiers. Although the trial was a success, unintended psychological side effects from constant wakefulness led to the unit going AWOL and indiscriminately targeting the local population, killing several hundreds, if not thousands of both North and South Vietnamese people, most of whom were civilians.
At the end of the war, the remainder of the squad, those being Augustus "Preacher" Cole, Salvatore Matola and Willig himself, were discharged as part of a government coverup, certain that any possibility of an information leak would be disbelieved. Like many veterans, Willig was left to fend for himself after leaving the service, struggling with untreated PTSD and failing to secure work, leading to him living off of disability checks in a small apartment in Queens, New York City.
In 1994, Willig received an unexpected visit from Preacher, who had let himself in through his unlocked front door. Caught off guard, he shares that he still has flashbacks to the war and quickly deduces that Cole was responsible for the recent murder of Dr. Saul Grissom, one of the doctors involved in the sleep experiment. Cole then tells him that it was punishment for the sins they committed in Vietnam and that they all had to pay, at which point, much to Willig's horror, a group of blood-soaked Vietnamese civilians appear in the apartment. Cole quotes from the Bible about the forgiveness of God, in spite of humanity's sins, before the figures pull out automatic rifles and gun Willig down.
In truth, no one had shot Willig, but Cole had developed psychic powers that allowed him to conjure up life-like hallucinations, due to which Willig, believing he really was being shot, developed several inner wounds consistent to those found in gunshot victims.(TXF: "Sleepless")