Benjamin grew up in a suburb of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He grew up loving sports and is a huge fan of the Brewers, Admirals, and naturally the Green Bay Packers! 

During his childhood, he remembered watching footage of the war in Desert Storm in the news, and he decided that early that he wanted to be a soldier. After high school, Benjamin joined the U.S. Army Reserves as a(n) Operating Room Specialist. 

In 2005, after about two years in the Reserves with the 452nd Combat Support Hospital, he volunteered to go Active Duty and upon arrival at his first duty assignment to Brooke Army Medical Center in Fort Sam Houston, Texas he volunteered to deploy with the 10th Combat Support Hospital out of Fort Carson, Colorado for a year long deployment to Baghdad, Iraq in the Green Zone at Ibn Sina Hospital.

Two years later, wanting to be on the front line, he changed his job within the Army to a Cavalry Scout where he would be assigned to 5th Brigade 2nd Infantry Division Stryker Brigade Combat Team (SBCT) 8th Squadron 1st Cavalry Regiment out of Fort Lewis, Washington. He then deployed in 2009 to Afghanistan, and within two months, his life was changed due to permanent injuries received from an improvised explosive device that crushed the driver compartment of the Stryker vehicle that he was driving. He received numerous injuries including a debilitating injury to his right leg and was medically evacuated to Kandahar Airfield for emergency surgery and treatment. He would go on to receive multiple limb salvage surgeries, along with numerous surgeries to repair his multiple injuries. 

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