“Working day and night to take care of a number pneumonia patients that poured into Base Hospital 50” Private Charles Norman Fletcher contracted the disease and died on October 9, 1918; two days later. (Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 28 Nov 1918.) At the time of his death he was ward master in the hospital, responsible for the patients and the enlisted staff. He was buried in the Army cemetery at Mesves, in the department of Nievre, his name inscribed in a notebook of burials by chaplain Bergen Hansen. He was later reinterred in Seattle’s Lake View Cemetery. (bit.ly/uw_fletcher)
At the time he registered for the draft, Charles was working at a salmon cannery in Dundas Bay, Alaska. One of the first to enlist after the organization of the base hospital in Seattle, by Major James B. Eagleson, Charles withdrew during his sophomore year at the UW to enlist having previously been rejected in earlier attempts to enlist in either the infantry or artillery. Born in Buckley, Washington, Charles was survived by his mother and father, Anna and Charles Fletcher, natives of Scotland and English, respectively and an older sister. He death was the first gold star for his fraternity Kappa Sigma. Charles was a graduate of Broadway High School.