"Norene Royer," Box 1, Folder 8, Grace Phelps Papers, Historical Collections & Archives, Oregon Health & Science University. Courtesy Historical Collections & Archives, OHSU. |
Royer's file indicates that she contracted influenza on September 8, 1918. This was part of a global wave of the disease; Royer was among an estimated 20 to 40 million people who died worldwide. She was presumably in the nurses' infirmary until her death on September 17, 1918.
The only place to bury the body appears to have been the Base Hospital cemetery that had been used to bury the bodies of patients who died there. It was the cemetery to which Eleanor Donaldson referred in her essay on "The Nurses Club" in Wight, On Active Service with Base Hospital 46: "The third road ran just a few yards from our tent door, with the river beyond--the last road of all, for the boys we left in France. It was a short road, ending in a plot at the foot of the hill where the sun's light touched the white crosses 'row on row.'" (152)
"American Cemetery at Bazoilles," Otis Wight et al., On Active Service With Base Hospital 46 (Portland, OR: Arcady Press, 1920), 9. |
"Funeral of Miss Royer," Otis Wight et al., On Active Service With Base Hospital 46 (Portland, OR: Arcady Press, 1920), 9. |
Two other staff members of Base Hospital 46 died while in service in France: Corporal Ernest D. Stout (September 21, 1918) and Private First Class Kenneth Welshons (November 9, 1918) (Wight, On Active Service, 8.) Their funerals were not documented with images.