Aire Communal Cemetery

Aire-sur-la-Lys is a town about 14 kilometres south-south-east of St Omer. The Communal Cemetery is 0.75 kilometres north of the town, on the road to St. Omer, and the four Commonwealth plots are on the east side.

From March 1915 to February 1918, Aire was a busy but peaceful centre used by Commonwealth forces as a corps headquarters. The Highland Casualty Clearing Station was based there as were other medical units. The burials in plots II, III and IV (rows A to F) relate to the fighting of 1918, when the 54th Casualty Clearing Station came to Aire and the town was, for a while, within 13 kilometres of the German lines. It was during this period - on 19 August 1918 - that Fred Ormerod, of 9th Battalion, Northumberland Fusiliers died, and he is buried in the Cemetery (Grave Ref. IV. B. 16).