A Fox News journalist who lost a limb and sight in one eye in an attack while reporting on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine made his return to live TV Thursday with an uplifting message to viewers.
Benjamin Hall urged those at home to “never give up, never assume it’s all over” as he called into “Fox & Friends” in his first television appearance since the March 2022 attack outside Kyiv that killed two of his colleagues.
“I’ve got one leg, I’ve got no feet, I see through one eye, got one workable hand. I was burned all over, and I feel stronger, I feel more confident than I ever have,” Hall said from London.
He said the experience taught him valuable life lessons.
“I think it’s really important when you’re feeling low … to know there’s good on the other side,” Hall added. “If you work hard, if you dedicate yourself to getting somewhere and you don’t stop trying to achieve that, you will get there.”
The foreign correspondent was severely wounded when the vehicle he was traveling in with other journalists came under fire by Russian forces in Horenka.
Fox News photojournalist Pierre Zakrzewski, 55, and Ukrainian fixer and journalist Oleksandra Kuvshynova, 24, were killed in the attack.
Hall was close friends with Zakrzewski and credited him for helping to save his life in his final moments.
He said the cameraman crawled out of their car and he followed him out before a third bomb struck the vehicle.
“The two of us laid there for about 40 minutes, and talked, he passed away,” Hall said.
The journalist also said he is grateful to his three young daughters who he had a vision of while staring down death.
His voice caught while he read a passage from his forthcoming memoir about the attack and his recovery describing the moment he heard their voices pleading, “Daddy, you got to get out of the car.”
“In that moment when it happened, I was totally out. I was very badly injured. I had shrapnel in the eye and in the throat and I saw my own daughters, my young daughters and they brought me back and I found the strength,” Hall said.
“I opened my eyes and I managed to crawl out of the car and then the third bomb hit the car itself and if it weren’t for them bringing me back, there’s no way I would be here today.”
The wounded correspondent was evacuated from the war zone by a special operations team and the nonprofit organization Save Our Allies. He was flown to a military medical facility in Texas where he underwent multiple surgeries as well as intensive physical therapy.
“I remember from the very day this happened, remembering and thinking that I will get back,” he told Fox & Friends. “I remember lying there when it happened in the middle of nowhere, very badly injured and thinking ‘I’m going home no matter what, I will crawl if I have to.’ And I thought that way throughout and that’s what got me here.”
That motivation inspired the title of Hall’s book “Saved: A War Reporter’s Mission to Make it Home,” which hits retailers on March 14.
Hall was awarded a 2022 Foreign Press Award from The Association of Foreign Press Correspondents last month.
“I think it’s absolutely essential that we tell the news from wherever we can,” he said. “We got to keep telling the stories of the atrocities that are going on, we got to keep telling the stories of the heroes who are out there as well.
