Squad Deployment
Blackburn is a Staff Sergeant in the
1st Reconnaissance Battalion of the
United States Marine Corps, serving in squad
Misfit 1-3. He is deployed in Sulaymaniyah, Iraqi Kurdistan, and Tehran, Iran in the war effort against the
People's Liberation and Resistance (PLR) in 2014.
Missions
He and
Dimitri "Dima" Mayakovsky are the main protagonists of the story in
Battlefield 3's single-player campaign, and Blackburn is the player-controlled character in the vast majority of the missions in the game, spanning 7 out of the 12 missions.
He is first seen in the
in medias res introduction to the single player campaign, where he jumps on a New York City subway train that has been hijacked by the PLR. He storms each car on the train until he enters the last one where he is ambushed by Solomon.
The game then moves 8 hours backward in the story to the point where Henry Blackburn is being interrogated by two CIA officers,
Gordon, and
Whistler, in a CIA office near
Hunterspoint, Queens. Blackburn is in custody after killing his commanding officer, Captain
Quinton Cole, inside
Amir Kaffarov's villa after he threatened to shoot him and Dimitri Mayakovsky, who had revealed Solomon's plans to set off two nuclear devices in Paris and New York City.
Blackburn is interrogated by the two agents, summarizing his involvement in the war for them, and how he became aware of a nuclear bomb plot. The agents also wish to know what faction threatens the city with nuclear devices. Blackburn explains the events of the war from his first mission until the last one.
Personal life
Not much is known about Blackburn's personal life except for some facts revealed during the game's loading screens stating that he was born in Buffalo, New York.
[1] His father's name is Michael Blackburn. He fought during the
Vietnam War, and according to Henry, Michael would have random outbursts by the traumatized effects of the war. His mother's name is not known, and he also has a girlfriend/fiancee named Charlene. His grandfather, George Blackburn, fought in the European Theater of
World War II.