Cairo War Memorial Cemetery

This cemetery is within the Old Cairo cemetery area, which is situated approximately 5 kilometres south east of the centre of Cairo.

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission website describes how at the outbreak of the First World War, Cairo was headquarters to the United Kingdom garrison in Egypt. With Alexandria, it became the main hospital centre for Gallipoli in 1915 and later dealt with the sick and wounded from operations in Egypt and Palestine.

Cairo War Memorial Cemetery was formerly part of the New British Protestant Cemetery, but plots B, D, F, H, K, M, O, P and Q were ceded to the Commission in 1920. Some graves were brought into these plots from elsewhere in the Protestant Cemetery and later, 85 First World War graves were concentrated from Minia War Cemetery, 200 km south of Cairo, where maintenance could not be assured.

There are now 2,057 Commonwealth casualties of the First World War and 340 from the Second World War buried or commemorated in the Cemetery, including the grave of John Allan Ormerod (Grave Ref. O. 218.), who died in July 1918, whilst serving with the Northamptonshire Regiment.