The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-02-11

to the importunities of his wife, Sarah Forbes.
 In statement to his commanding officer, he says that in March 1904, he entered suit against her for divorce In September, 1905, in letter of that date, Mrs. Forbes asks the military authorities to make her husband, Charles Forbes, support her and their two small children. He has been send ing through the Department of Public Charities of New York a small amount" she wrote, they now notify me that he would send me no more." The military authorities sat upon the case and de- cided that they had no authority to enforce payment.
 Escaped Penalty of DesertiOn For. in the meantime, Forbes had escaped the regular penalty of deser- tion. Those were the days of the skele- ton army, when in the course of year half of the privates of any given com mand might Go over the hill :" the policy of the War Department, as en. dorsed by President Roosevelt, was to woo the deserter back and forgive all. Upon his promise to serve out his full term of enlistment and be a good sol- dier, he was reinstated without trial He went to the Philippines with his com mand, rose to the rank of sergeant. was honorably discharged. Willie off-the- Pickle Boat was his nickname in the army ; his old comrades and commanders remember him as a gay, roistering blade of soldier, the life of the barracks. !, He. was thirty-one years old when he took his discharge from the army and settled in the Pacific northwest aS far from the scenes of his early troubles as he could get without swim ming. Already he had some training in the construction business. In his statement at the time of his arrest for desertion, he says that he had worked up from water-boy to superintendent or construction-urobab foreman--at a salary of $1.400 a year.
 In 1917, when he applied for his commission in the army. he notes on instruction ill civil engineering at Cooper Union. New York He had moreover made a beginning at that rough-and-ready public speaking which was to serve his purposes in his brief day of glory. Once during the period of his desertion, he was Fourth of July orator at Goffstown. New Hampshire. and he adds in his appeal to the army authorities: T have been engaged at numerous times in delivering lectures and have always felt that could not conscientiously deliver these addresses knowing of my desertion.'
 As Ward Politician.
 When next he appears to view, he is foreman of q cement gang at Seattle, and an active ward politician. Just be- fore the World war, he was in Omaha on construction deal which was never completed. There he met and married his second wife, Kate Forbes, who divorced him last year in Seattle. He drifted, then, to Honolulu. Begin ming as foreman of a construction gang, he worked into Island politics; be- came superintendent afterward com. missioner of public works.
 Then, one morning. opportunity walked off the gang-plank of a trans. Pacific steamer. Senator Warren c. Harding. of Ohio, already a presiden- tial possibility, had come to make an official visit to the islands. The com. missioner of public works had himself appointed escort to the senatorial party. And Forbes, on his purely personal | side, was the kind of man which our late president liked perhaps too well. Lively, vital. witty in a rough way. his mouth full of good stories and harmless gossip of the day. he had above all things the trick of person. aity. Wherever he went he was sur rounded by ~nypwds of men, listening tO him.
 He does not strike fellow male, somehow. as the kind of man to attract women. But no mere male is a judge of that; and one of his old circle has test- fled that ''the women fell for him in regiments" When the crash came in lcs"tlHusd 'a rass p. c'Iuas Osss