In the last 15 years, British journalist Benjamin Hall has become one of the most recognizable faces reporting from the dangerous places where major international conflicts take place. Last year, his experience took him to Ukraine, to work as a correspondent for Fox News. There he was severely injured exactly one year ago: he suffered the loss of a leg on one side and a foot on the other, as well as the function of one hand and one eye.
After 30 operations, he continues trying to adapt to his new life with prostheses and canes, with the support of his wife Alicia and their daughters, with whom he can now enjoy more time at home. In an interview with PEOPLE magazine, leading up to the publication of his memoir Saved: A War Reporter’s Mission to Make It Home, Hall described his difficult path to recuperation.
“I look at my wounds and they don’t worry me in the slightest, because I’m here with my family.”
This moving video summarizes the different stages of his recovery and has been published on his Instagram account:
On air with #Hannity tonight. Telling the whole story. #SAVED @FoxNews pic.twitter.com/nyF8BkpKx5
— Benjamin Hall (@BenjaminHallFNC) March 10, 2023
Hall understood the risk involved in traveling to Ukraine to cover the war, but he also understands that “the only way to tell a good story is to be there.” The correspondent was injured when he was returning to Kyiv with his vehicle after taking pictures in a city near the capital. The car was hit by a volley of Russian missiles, killing 52-year-old cameraman Pierre Zakrzewski and Ukrainian journalist Oleksandra Kuvshynova.
“It is with great sadness and regret that we share the news of the death this morning of our beloved cameraman Pierre Zakrzewski. Pierre died in Horenka, just outside Kyiv,” Suzanne Scott, CEO of Fox News, said in a statement.
Scott explained that Zakrzewski and Hall, who had been in Ukraine since early February, were gathering information when their vehicle was shot at.
Zakrzewski was a veteran war reporter who covered multiple war conflicts, including Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria.
“I lost limbs and am badly injured, but they lost everything,” Hall told PEOPLE. About Zakrzewski, he described him as a great man and his mentor From him: “His love of life, his utter generosity, his kindness and his adventure.”
Hall was saved when a passerby found him injured on the ground. He was rushed to a Kyiv hospital until Fox News found out about his condition. The company began contacting people from all over the world to get him out of Ukraine and into a US Army hospital. Ultimately, he recovered alone in a Texas hospital, without his family, to be free from distractions and more motivated to shorten his stay.
His wife Alicia revealed to PEOPLE how she made the decision to tell her young daughters what had happened to their father. “I didn’t want to say anything to the girls until we knew for sure that she was going to be okay. I didn’t want them to worry that she had been in an accident and then not be able to give them any answers,” she said.
Finally, Hall spoke to his daughters on the phone, so they wouldn’t worry about their father’s physical condition. The correspondent returned to his London home in August 2022, just in time to celebrate his eldest daughter’s seventh birthday. Now he never tires of thanking them for the luck he has to stay alive to see them grow and enjoy his side. That was precisely his only wish on his road to recovery.
“Now I look at the world with much more confidence. You could throw absolutely anything at me and I know I’ll get through it,” Hall said.
“I feel a real physical emotion like I’ve never felt before: an absolutely physical feeling of love,” he described to PEOPLE of his time with his wife and daughters since the accident. “Every time I look at them, I now feel that.”
