‘They Brought Me Back’: Fox News Reporter Reveals What Saved Him After Bomb Blast In Ukraine
Fox News foreign correspondent Benjamin Hall revealed what saved his life in his first on-air interview since a bomb blast outside of Kyiv, Ukraine, killed two of his colleagues and nearly claimed his life as well.
Hall joined hosts Steve Doocy, Ainsley Earhardt, and Brian Kilmeade on Thursday’s broadcast of “Fox & Friends” to talk about his experience, his continuing recovery, and the nine words he’s credited with saving his life.
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On March 14, 2022, Hall was seriously injured in the Russian attack that killed Fox News cameraman Pierre Zakrzewski and Ukrainian producer Oleksandra Kuvshynova. He ultimately lost both feet, part of one leg, the use of one hand, and the vision in one eye — but during Thursday’s interview, he revealed what had pushed him to survive, to make it home, and to get back to broadcasting.
Thanking all those who had flooded him with their kind words and prayers, Hall said that the key to recovery was simple: “I think that when you’ve gone through something like I’ve gone through, the highs, the lows, you have to have a target, you have to get something to fight for.”
He went on to detail the first moments following the blast, immediately after everything around him had “gone dark,” by reading an excerpt from his upcoming memoir: “Saved: A War Reporter’s Mission To Make It Home.”
If I had the slightest iota of consciousness, it was a distant sense of shock waves and the feeling that every part of my body — bones, organs, sinew, my soul — had been knocked out of me. I was all but dead but improbably, out of this crippling nothingness, a figure came through, and I heard a familiar voice, as real as anything I’d ever known. “Daddy, you’ve got to get out of the car.”
Hall said that in that moment, he saw his daughters — and he crawled out of the car. Just as he got himself out, another shell landed a direct hit on the car.
“They brought me back, and I found the strength. I opened my eyes and managed to crawl out of the car. And then the third bomb hit the car itself. If it weren’t for them bringing me back, there is no way I would be here today,” he said.
Hall then revealed that the cameraman, Zakrzewski, had also gotten out of the car — and the two of them talked as they waited and hoped that help would arrive. “The two of us laid there for about 40 minutes, and talked, he passed away,” Hall said.
In the days, weeks, and even months that followed, Hall explained the risky civilian operation that got him out of Ukraine — and credited the military hospitals at Landstuhl Air Force Base in Germany and Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas, for rebuilding him in both body and mind.
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