Like many Halloween partygoers in the South Korean city of Itaewon a year ago, Chief Warrant Officer 2 Dane Beathard and Sgt. 1st Class Jarmil Taylor, had planned to stop at a couple of local establishments before calling it a night.
The Soldiers, from 2nd Battalion, 18th Field Artillery, 75th Field Artillery Brigade had just turned out of an alleyway onto the main street of Itaewon and were engulfed in a mass of humanity.
“It was crazy,” Taylor said. “It was just a wall of humans. We knew we had to get out of that.”
However, that was easier said than done.
“People were shoulder-to-shoulder, front to back,” Beathard remembered. “You could see people were having trouble breathing and were asking for help.”
The Soldiers made their way to a raised platform in front of a business and continued to watch the flow of the crowd. That’s when Taylor pointed out something he said he’ll never forget.
“I saw a woman. She had turned blue because they were packed so tight, she couldn’t breathe,” he remembered tearfully. “I knew she was dead, but I couldn’t reach her. The closeness of the bodies kept her upright and moving with the crowd.”
So, the Soldiers used their slightly elevated perch to start pulling people out of the crowd.
“We lost count,” Beathard said. “We just started reaching in and grabbing hands and pulling people out and handing them off to the door people of the business and reaching for someone else.”
In fact, there’s a video showing Taylor pulling so many people out of the crushing mass of humanity that South Korean media nicknamed him “The Radish Picker,” for the way he was plucking people out of the flow.
“We couldn’t get everyone,” Taylor said. “One man held his young daughter up to us and we grabbed her. But, by the time we turned back around, her father was gone. We don’t know what happened to him.”
More than 150 people were in the human wave event Oct. 31, 2022.
Beathard believes training and situational awareness kept him and his battle-buddies alive that night.
“My Spidey-senses went off and I’m glad I listened to them,” he said. “We worked together and got out of the crowd. But there’s no training for something like this. It’s something I will never forget.”
The Soldiers have kept in touch with a few of the people and families of people they saved that night. They don’t consider themselves heroes. The feel they were doing what anyone would do in the same situation.
Both Beathard and Taylor were awarded Meritorious Service Medals for the actions that night.
Paramount+ Network and CBS News came to Fort Sill earlier this year to interview Beathard and Taylor. That show is scheduled to air on Paramount+ Oct. 17.
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