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  CRF 05.jpg - Lt. Col. Charles R. Forbes in front of artillery shells. Forbes was a signal man. (Photo: Signal Corps courtesy of Barry Marsh, great grandson of Col. Forbes.) His great grandson writes: "Forbes was an interesting character. An enlisted Army deserter around 1900, he was captured after three years on the lam and made to serve out the rest of his enlistment, when he was honorably discharged as a 1st Sgt. He joined the Territory of Hawaii National Guard around 1912 (he served as a Captain, I believe), and when drafted into the regular Army as a 1st Sgt. in 1917 he instead activated his reserve commission and became a Major in the 33rd Div. A.E.F. He had become friends with Senator Warren Harding in the 19-teens, and after the war he parlayed his friendship with President Harding into a job as the first Director of the U.S. Veteran's Bureau. He wasn't the most honest of men (like Harding), and within a few years he was charged with embezzlement (I have a copy of the indictment: he was charged with embezzling/squandering $250,000,000); he was convicted and sent to Leavenworth Federal Prison for two years. He died in 1947, long before I was born."  
 
 
 
 
 

Lt. Col. Charles R. Forbes in front of artillery shells. Forbes was a signal man. (Photo: Signal Corps courtesy of Barry Marsh, great grandson of Col. Forbes.) His great grandson writes: "Forbes was an interesting character. An enlisted Army deserter around 1900, he was captured after three years on the lam and made to serve out the rest of his enlistment, when he was honorably discharged as a 1st Sgt. He joined the Territory of Hawaii National Guard around 1912 (he served as a Captain, I believe), and when drafted into the regular Army as a 1st Sgt. in 1917 he instead activated his reserve commission and became a Major in the 33rd Div. A.E.F. He had become friends with Senator Warren Harding in the 19-teens, and after the war he parlayed his friendship with President Harding into a job as the first Director of the U.S. Veteran's Bureau. He wasn't the most honest of men (like Harding), and within a few years he was charged with embezzlement (I have a copy of the indictment: he was charged with embezzling/squandering $250,000,000); he was convicted and sent to Leavenworth Federal Prison for two years. He died in 1947, long before I was born."
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