An officer of the 112th noticed that every time he called for a runner from any one of three companies, it was always the same man who responded. The man was Private Charles J. Ryan, of Harrisburg, a member of Company I. When a lull came in the activity, the officer investigated in person, because the men assigned to act as runners should have taken turns and he suspected the others were imposing on Ryan, which is subversive of discipline. To his amazement, he learned from the unanimous accounts of all the men, including Ryan, that the latter had insisted that the other runners should let him take all the assignments to duty. The officer put a stop to the method.
France puts her clergymen into the army as fighting men, on the same basis as any other men. America exempts men of the cloth from military service, but offers them an opportunity to serve their country and humanity, as well as their calling, by acting as chaplains to the fighting men. As such, they are supposed to have nothing to do with the fighting. But there come times, in the heat and rush of battle, when quick action by the nearest man of ability and judgment points the way to victory.
Such an occasion arose on the second day of the Argonne drive, when all the officers of a battalion of the 111th Infantry were incapacitated. Lieutenant Charles G. Conaty, of Boston, a Catholic priest who was a chaplain in the 111th, was the only commissioned officer remaining with the battalion. He promptly jumped into the breach and led the men in a victorious charge. Lieutenant Conaty had not long recovered at that time from the effects of gas which he inhaled while working close to the lines in the Marne-Vesle drive.
A German sniper wounded the "bunkie" of Thomas Corry, of Pittsburgh, a member of Company I, 111th Infantry. Corry started out to stalk the sniper in revenge. He spent the whole day at it and returned with half a dozen prisoners, all the snipers he had found except the ones who showed fight and had to be killed.
A major of the 111th at one time sent a runner to the 109th machine gun battalion to ask for immediate assistance. Company B of the gunners, under Captain Daniel Burke Strickler, of Columbia, Pa., set out at once with a guide. They followed the guide over one hill, but saw no sign either of the enemy or a hard-pressed battalion of their own men. At the bottom of the next hill, Captain Strickler called a halt and asked the guide if he were sure the battalion was at the top.
The guide replied that they were hardly 100 yards away and started up the hill alone to make sure. He had gone not more than twenty feet when a masked machine gun battery opened up and the guide was shot to ribbons. Captain Strickler ascertained the location of the infantry lines from a wounded man who happened along on his way to the rear and started for them.
The infantry, however, had been having a hard time and had been directed to retire while the artillery laid down a barrage. Unaware of this, Captain Strickler led his men up the hill and walked into the edge of our own barrage, but the company escaped without the loss of a man.
The effect of the American pressure now was being felt far behind the German front lines, as was evidenced by the sheets of flame by night and clouds of smoke by day which signaled the burning of heaps of stores and the explosion of ammunition dumps far to the north.
Advancing around Apremont, the 111th ran into difficulties and was delayed. Runners carried the word to the 55th Brigade and Captain Meehan and a battalion of the 109th were detached and sent over to help. They cleaned out the Bois de la T'Aibbe, which was strongly garrisoned and offered a next to impregnable front, so that when the 111th disposed of its immediate difficulties it was able to move up to the same front as the rest of the regiments.