![\"Fox](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/524\/2025\/06\/BENJAMIN-HALL.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nAs a war correspondent, Benjamin Hall has covered stories of those caught in conflict, violence and tragedy \u2014 but on March, 14, 2022, he became part of the story. And the story of his life changed forever.<\/p>\n
(Full interview video embedded below.)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Not long after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February of that year, Hall and colleagues Pierre Zakrzewski and Oleksandra \u201cSasha\u201d Kuvshynova were riding in a car outside Kyiv, when incoming fire struck their vehicle.<\/p>\n Zakrzewski and Kuvshynova were killed, but Hall survived \u2014 barely. He later recalled how a vision of one of his little daughters urged him, his body shattered, to crawl out of the burning car. He was found and taken to a hospital for treatment.<\/p>\n Hall lost the lower part of his right leg, suffered damage to the left leg\/foot, lost his left thumb and sight in his left eye, along with also having burns and traumatic brain injury.<\/p>\n The story of how the nonprofit Save Our Allies<\/a> managed to essentially smuggle Hall out of the combat zone and into Poland is the stuff of the most dramatic of adventure films. From Poland, Hall was taken by the U.S. military to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany and then later to the Brooke Army Medical Center (BAMC<\/a>) in San Antonio, Texas.<\/p>\n Some 30 surgeries, prosthetics and much grueling physical therapy later, the British-born Benjamin Hall \u2014 who was raised in the Catholic faith of his Philippines-born father<\/a> \u2014 returned to his wife and children in London.<\/p>\n And later, he was back to work at Fox News Channel as a senior correspondent.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t miss a thing: Subscribe to all that I write at\u00a0Authory.com\/KateOHare.<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Hall documented his rescue and time at BAMC in his first book, Saved: A War Reporter\u2019s Mission to Make It Home<\/em>\u00a0<\/a>(2023).<\/p>\n Then, in 2025, he released Resolute: How We Humans Keep Finding Ways to Beat the Toughest Odds.<\/em><\/a> It tracks more of his journey to rebuild his life, and the lessons about human resilience \u2014 and his own relationship with his Catholic faith \u2014 he learned along the way.<\/span><\/p>\n I actually did the audio versions of both of these books, read by the author \u2014 who does an excellent job (as one might expect of a professional broadcast journalist).<\/p>\n He also has a children\u2019s book coming out from his publisher, HarperCollins, in March 2026, called Read All About It!<\/a> Illustrated by Martina Motzo, it\u2019s the story of a little hedgehog who is determined to spread the news about an emergency in his forest.<\/p>\n I recently had an extended conversation with Hall about a number of topics, including:<\/p>\n The full interview is embedded below, but here are some excerpts:<\/p>\n What I\u2019ve also noticed recently is that, because of the loud noise and the voices that you get on social media, there is actually more attention to be paid and is being paid to real networks, to real newspapers, to real journalists.<\/p>\n And I do think that actually the public who, for a moment, was swayed towards getting all their news from social media, are back looking for verifiable sources, really good journalists who they can trust now. \u2026<\/p>\n I say this as a father of four, I\u2019m so aware of where my children will get their information, and what I say to them all the time is, don\u2019t just trust the first person you see.<\/p>\n Listen to a few people and then eventually you start to develop a relationship or you start to trust someone, because you have spent quite some time looking at this network or reading that writer, and you have seen that they are telling the truth, that they are bringing the facts to you.<\/p>\n And then I think once you develop that relationship with someone, then that\u2019s someone you can trust. So it\u2019s about finding the people you trust.<\/p>\n It\u2019s about doing so over time by comparing it to others, by reading other news sources. And I think that it\u2019s, again, networks and newspapers that can do that.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I\u2019m a firm believer, it doesn\u2019t matter how many facts you can pull together \u2026 I\u2019m a firm believer that you need someone there. You have to be able to, I would say, to smell the earth, look someone in the eyes.<\/p>\n I always found that when you go to tell a story, you always have an idea in your mind of what the story might be when you\u2019re going there, you do the research, it\u2019s always different. There\u2019s always something you didn\u2019t notice. There\u2019s always an angle you hadn\u2019t thought of. There\u2019s a relationship that you didn\u2019t see.<\/p>\n You don\u2019t get that no matter how much fact that you have or statistics you have thrown at you, you don\u2019t get the nuance of a story unless you are there.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I feel it all the time, and I was always very good at, after I was injured, to realizing life is different. There are things you can\u2019t do that you used to do, and that\u2019s OK. Embrace what you can. Forget what you can no longer do.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The reason I didn\u2019t write about it in Saved<\/em>, and even when I picked the title Saved<\/em>, I was thinking about was I saved by angels or by God at the beginning, and yet I didn\u2019t write about it in the book.<\/p>\n And that\u2019s because my own journey with religion and my Catholicism has been very varied my whole life.<\/p>\n And during my recovery, there were moments when we always talk about, \u201cWhy does God allow terrible things to happen?\u201d Natural disasters it, it\u2019s a big question. Everyone who\u2019s religious asking it as well. It was the back of my mind as well.<\/p>\n And I hadn\u2019t been that close to my religion, but it is always a part of me.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n It\u2019s OK to have your journeys with religion. It\u2019s OK to sometimes feel really strong about it, and it\u2019s OK sometimes not to feel strong about it. I think perhaps that makes it even stronger, when you\u2019re questioning it and asking about it, and you want to understand it. That\u2019s how you build strong relationships with things.<\/p>\n And so I thought, when I wrote Resolute<\/em>, that I really want to write about it. And I wrote about a number of occasions where I just remember seeing a few moments where, when I needed it, or when things were terrible, there was that little beacon of God.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I was just in the conclave in Rome as well, and I was covering that for Fox. \u2026 I was down in St. Peter\u2019s Square and being surrounded by hundreds of thousands of Catholics unified in their faith and hope and optimism and kindness and brought together.<\/p>\n And even there, it was another big moment for my making me stronger. I was like, this is something you don\u2019t usually see so many people together. And there we all were together \u2026<\/p>\n I thought, \u201cThis is amazing.\u201d What a great strength. And you might feel that your religion is just you and your religion, but it\u2019s not. It\u2019s so much bigger than that. It\u2019s so many people. It\u2019s everywhere in the world.<\/p>\n And wow, not many things \u2026 in fact, I can\u2019t think of anything [else] that brings together people from so many different cultures and countries.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I believe that we are living in a world where we do have to be a bit proactive. and we have to show, particularly the young, that you\u2019ve got to be involved in community. You\u2019ve got to help people who are knocked down.<\/p>\n And I didn\u2019t feel it as strongly until I was so badly injured. All the people who came to lift me up \u2026 and I\u2019m a journalist who have seen people knocked down around the world in wars my whole career. But, even I didn\u2019t quite get what it means to be at the receiving end of that.<\/p>\n And wow, it probably saved me, it got me through the worst moments with joy and optimism because there are people helping me.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Here\u2019s the whole thing \u2014 and there\u2019s a lot more great stuff in there, including about being a dad \u2026 and who might play him (and his wife) in the movie about his rescue.<\/p>\nWhen Hall Became a War Casualty in Ukraine<\/h3>\n
Hall Turns His Experience Into Two Books From HarperCollins<\/h3>\n
Talking to Benjamin Hall<\/a> About Journalism, Faith, Storytelling and More<\/h3>\n
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On restoring trust between the public and the media:<\/h4>\n
On the importance of being there:<\/h4>\n
On dealing with his physical limitations:<\/h4>\n
On why he didn\u2019t discuss his Catholicism in Saved<\/em>:<\/h4>\n
On why he did write about his faith in Resolute<\/em>:<\/h4>\n
On being in St. Peter\u2019s Square during the conclave in May 2025:<\/h4>\n
On shifting his focus from conflict to community:<\/h4>\n