Fox News war correspondent Benjamin Hall had spent years reporting from the world’s most dangerous places, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, but nothing prepared him for the day he became the headline himself.
On March 14, 2022, while covering Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Hall was traveling with cameraman Pierre Zakrzewski, 55, and Ukrainian producer Sasha Kuvshynova, 24, through the battered village of Horenka near Kyiv. Then, everything went black.
“We’d barely turned to look before the second bomb whistled overhead and landed right next to us,” Hall recalls in his memoir, Saved: A War Reporter’s Mission to Make It Home.
The Voice That Pulled Him Back
Hall was in the “death seat”, the middle seat, of the vehicle when a series of blasts ripped through the convoy. The second explosion blew out the car, leaving Hall unconscious and badly injured.
But in the darkness, something, or someone, called to him.
“I saw my daughters,” Hall said. “My daughter Honor, in particular, came to me. She told me, ‘Daddy, you have to get out of the car.’”
In that moment, Hall felt himself come back to life.
“Suddenly I had awareness… The world rushed back into me — light, sound, smell.”
Realizing the door beside him was open, Hall managed to drag himself out, just seconds before a third explosion struck.
On Fire, Alone, and Fighting to Survive
“I was on fire,” Hall writes. “I started rolling and patting myself to smother the flames. Then I saw my right leg was gone, just some flesh and bone hanging by a flap of skin. My left foot was barely there.”
Though critically injured, Hall still had the presence of mind to take a photo of his legs, but he deleted it.
“I realized I didn’t want Alicia or the girls to ever see it.”
His cameraman and friend Zakrzewski, lying nearby, spoke his final words:
“They are Russians.”
Moments later, he passed away.
But Hall’s rescuers weren’t Russian. They were Ukrainian special forces, who rushed him to a Kyiv hospital.
30 Surgeries and an Unimaginable Recovery
From Kyiv, Hall was airlifted to Germany, and then transferred to Brooke Army Medical Center in Texas. There, doctors performed nearly 30 surgeries, and the toll was staggering:
- Right leg amputated below the knee
- Left foot amputated
- Left eye blinded (iris, lens, and cornea destroyed by shrapnel)
- Severe injuries to hands and neck
Despite it all, Hall never lost hope.
Losing Zakrzewski — and Holding Onto His Spirit
Hall and Zakrzewski had been through countless assignments together. In one memory from Ukraine, they visited a children’s hospital where only two children remained, one of them an abandoned baby named Prince Charlie.
Zakrzewski, deeply moved, said:
“Maybe I’ll adopt him.”
That was the man Hall knew, generous, thoughtful, and always searching for humanity in the darkest places.
“Pierre believed the world was more wonderful than frightening,” Hall writes. “He taught me that even in tragedy, there’s something good to be found.”
Telling the Story to Honor the Fallen
Hall’s memoir, Saved, was released on the one-year anniversary of the attack, March 14, 2023. Just days later, Fox News aired the emotional documentary Sacrifice and Survival: A Story from the Front Line.
He also regularly shares updates on Instagram, where his 24,000+ followers have watched his progress, from rehab to prosthetics to even swinging a golf club again.
A Mission of Meaning
“If you don’t get up right now and do something positive,” Hall says, “then you’ve wasted everything. You’ve wasted Pierre’s life.”
He says the voice of his daughter saved him that day. But it’s his fallen friends, Zakrzewski, Kuvshynova, and all the others affected by the war, who keep him moving forward.
“You have to look at things head-on,” Hall said. “Because if you don’t, that’s when they’ll catch you by surprise.”
