If you’ve watched any show on Fox News recently, you have most certainly seen at least one interview of Benjamin Hall as he shares his story of being critically wounded in Ukraine. Hall is a British American war reporter who relished the opportunity to be in the midst of the fighting all over the world. His story is an inspiring one, as he defies the odds to survive not only his devastating wounds, but his journey of escaping Ukraine and eventually being treated in the United States.

My praise for Hall’s book includes his candid, lucid, and dramatic storytelling, which included some background on his family of origin; his early job partnering with another Brit; his passion for his work; his mental and emotional strength to endure the treatment of his injuries, the separation from his family, the seemingly endless pain from his wounds and the hallucinations that accompanied his pain medications; his devotion to his co-workers, his friends, his rescuers; and finally his love for and dedication to his wife and daughters.

In spite of my praise for his book, though, I also had one major question about his story. More on that later.

Early in the book, Hall shared some extraordinary experiences, call them divine if you will, when the impossible seemed to happen. When he was in Ukraine, the car he was riding in was hit by a bomb, and he described the incident in this way:

I had the slightest hint 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, leaving behind a useless husk.

I was all but dead.

But then—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.

The other four people who had been in the car had died. The image and voice belonged to his oldest daughter, Honor. And he acted on her words.

Most of Hall’s “impossible” experiences were not quite as dramatic, but they were amazing nonetheless: crawling with devastating wounds to the only car passing by in this desolate area, a car that stopped to rescue him; transported to a hospital through dangerous territory; his adventures with Rick when he nearly died in a number of incidents; going from freelancer to Fox News; how Jennifer Griffin was instrumental in getting him out of Ukraine; overcoming the many obstacles to reaching the Polish border; the intervention of Save our Allies and one of their top performers known as Seaspray; a place on a train in the car of the Polish prime minister; and the seemingly insurmountable logistical, physical and emotional challenges took him on a trip that was simply impossible.

But Hall found his way through it.

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The major question that arose for me was Benjamin Hall’s choices regarding his dangerous work. When he was single, charging off with his friend to seek war zones was certainly a choice he was entitled to make. He felt a passionate dedication to be in the center of conflict, to see what those in war zones were suffering, and to be able to report to the world his understanding of what was happening.

Then he got married.

When he learned his wife became pregnant with their first child, here’s how he explained his reaction:

In Iraq, I hadn’t expected to share the news of Alicia’s pregnancy with anyone, but early on, and for whatever reason, I told Dominique, the camerawoman, about it.

‘You just found out and you’re here?” she said. “Why?”

I just smiled, but my initial thought was Why wouldn’t I be? Honestly, it never occurred to me not to go because of the big news.

This was my job. This is who I was. It had to be this way.

Hall’s single-mindedness may have served him well in the middle of war, but it seemed shortsighted and selfish, given the situation at home. He did make it home for the actual birth, but this early decision, I believe, influenced his breaking his agreement with his wife not to go into the middle of conflict, such as in Ukraine. His wife, Alicia, realized that when he went to Washington DC ahead of the rest of the family, it might influence future decisions:

‘I’d always known that covering wars was who Benji was, but what I think he didn’t always understand was that there needed to be a balance there,’ Alicia says. ‘When he went to DC by himself, I think he lost some of that balance, that sense of being in the family and having those responsibilities. I think the decisions he made in DC would have been different had he been at home with us [in London] when he made them.’

During his time in DC, the Ukraine-Russia war broke out, and Hall made this observation:

If there was going to be a war in Europe, I wanted to cover it. At the same time, I understood my obligations to Alicia and my family, and I knew I had to stop putting myself in dangerous situations.

Still, I wanted to cover the war.

On the morning of the invasion, Fox called him. And he went.

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By their very nature, some jobs require being put in harm’s way: law enforcement and the U.S. military are two of them, and these people often follow a high calling to serve. But a war correspondent has a choice about whether he can be of service without seriously endangering his or her life. As much as I admire a great deal about Benjamin Hall, his obsession with being in war-torn areas, particularly when he had children (he had three daughters), demonstrated to me a lack of good judgment.

I wonder what would have happened if Alicia had insisted earlier that he refuse to go to Ukraine: would he have honored her opinion? What if she had told him that she had an “uneasy feeling about me leaving, different from her usual trepidation about my traveling to a combat zone” (as she did)? Would he have been influenced by her misgivings?

Husbands and wives occasionally have very difficult decisions to make, particularly when they are especially devoted to one another and have children. And Hall was candid about his realization, after the fact, that he didn’t always choose wisely.

But I’m very glad that he shared this remarkable life experience, the people who devoted themselves to his recovery, the friends and family who stood by him.

That he learned from his good and unwise choices makes me admire him all the more.