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Fox News correspondentBen Hallmade an emotional return to work — albeit virtually, delivering remarks to his colleagues in a town hall meeting held six months after he survived a deadly attack while coveringRussia’s invasion of Ukraineon the ground.
Hall, now 40, has stayed mostly out of the spotlight during his recovery at Brooke Army Medical Center outside of San Antonio, Texas. Now, he tells the Fox News staff that he’s finally back home in London, reunited with his wife and children.
“I remember thinking [after the attack] when I was lying there that there was one thing I needed to do — and that was to get home, try somehow to get home and see my family,” Hall said. “Just a few weeks ago I managed to do that.”
Hall said leaving the San Antonio facility on Aug. 19 marked a victory for all of Fox News, as it was a recovery milestone only possible through “so much support, so much goodwill, so much help from everybody.”
Ben Hall.Fox News
On March 14, Hall and his crew were caught in a violent attack outside Kyiv, Ukraine. Two of his colleagues —Pierre Zakrzewski, a longtime cameraman for the network, andOleksandra “Sasha” Kuvshynova, a young Ukrainian journalist — were tragically killed.
But Hall survived, launching a prompt,Herculean effortto get him back to the States for medical attention.
As PEOPLE earlier reported, that extraction was carried out with the help of the Pentagon and a team of seasoned extraction experts.
Before sharing a word about Zakrzewski and Kuvshynova during Wednesday’s conversation with coworkers, Hall noted that it’s been “six months to the day” since the attack and that it’s still “difficult to think about.”
“But when I think back to Sasha, I think of someone who worked so hard, who went like we did to try to find the stories. And she did that each and every day that we worked with her,” he said at the company town hall.
“When I think of Pierre — this is someone who I traveled the world with, who many people at Fox News traveled with. To the tunnels of ISIS, to the front lines in Turkey, to the funerals and the great victories around the world, I was there alongside Pierre,” Hall recalled. “And he taught us one thing, one thing that everyone needs to remember: that you must love this job, that you must fight every day to do it in the best way you possibly can.”
On a more personal note, Hall remembered Zakrzewski as a man with “a smile on his face no matter where he went.”
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Hall has not yet resumed work, but has been assured that he’ll have a job waiting for him whenever he is ready.
“I can’t wait to be back,” he said.
source: people.com
