The Last Post Ceremony commemorating the service of Surgeon Lieutenant Derek Napier McKenzie, Royal Australian Naval Reserve, Attached Royal Navy (HMS Quorn), Second World War.

The Last Post Ceremony is presented in the Commemorative area of the Australian War Memorial each day. The ceremony commemorates more than 102,000 Australians who have given their lives in war and other operations and whose names are recorded on the Roll of Honour. At each ceremony the story behind one of the names on the Roll of Honour is told. Hosted by Gerard Pratt, the story for this day was on Surgeon Lieutenant Derek Napier McKenzie, Royal Australian Naval Reserve, Attached Royal Navy (HMS Quorn), Second World War.

Surgeon Lieutenant Derek Napier McKenzie, Royal Australian Naval Reserve, Attached Royal Navy (HMS Quorn)
KIA 3 August 1944

Today we remember and pay tribute to Surgeon Lieutenant Derek Napier McKenzie, Royal Australian Naval Reserve, who was killed in action when HMS Quorn was sunk in the English Channel in support of the Normandy landings in France on 3 August 1944.

Born in Ayr, Queensland, on 15 July 1915, Derek McKenzie was the only son of John and Mary McKenzie. After the passing of his father when he was ten years old, Derek moved with his mother to Melbourne, where they lived in the suburb of Glen Iris.

Derek grew up to study medicine at the University of Melbourne. While enrolled at the university, he enlisted in the Militia, serving in the local Melbourne Volunteer Rifles regimen.

During the Second World War, McKenzie enlisted in the Royal Australian Naval Reserve with the rank of surgeon lieutenant and was posted to London, where he served on attachment to the Royal Navy.

His first postings in Britain were to Royal Navy shore establishments: HMS Pembroke; HMS Ferret; HMS Fortitude; and HMS Spartiate.

In England he met a Scottish woman, Florence with whom he fell in love. Although they were not to marry, McKenzie’s service record records Florence as his de facto wife, and she changed her surname to McKenzie by deed poll.

In August 1943 McKenzie was appointed ship’s surgeon to the Hunt-class destroyer HMS Quorn.

At the time that McKenzie joined the crew, Quorn was part of the North Sea Flotilla. For the rest of 1943 and early 1944, Quorn undertook patrol and convoy duties in the North Sea.

At the end of May 1944, Quorn was detached from the North Sea Flotilla for duty with an escort group in the Eastern Task Force for Operation Overlord – the Allied invasion of Normandy.

On D–Day, 6 June 1944, HMS Quorn was one of the 6,000 vessels in the largest armada ever assembled. The success of the Allied landings in Normandy required the Allied navies to cross the English Channel to break in and establish a foothold in Hitler’s “Atlantic Wall”.

HMS Quorn spent D–Day escorting vessels across the English Channel, protecting the fleet from German submarines and torpedo boats that the Allied commanders feared would attack the vital supply line linking Britain with the landing beaches in Normandy.

This job was equally vital in the days and weeks after the initial landing on 6 June, and during this period Quorn continued in its role of escorting convoys and protecting the landing beaches. On several occasions the Germans attacked the flanks of Allied naval forces with torpedo boats – called E-boats by the British. The German navy also adopted the tactic of deploying divers on Neger torpedoes: a kind of one-man midget submarine often called a “human torpedo”.

On the night of 3 August 1944, HMS Quorn was off the coast near the French port of Le Havre protecting the landing beaches from German raiders, when it came under attack by a force of E-boats and human torpedos. Struck by a torpedo, Quorn broke in two, and sank rapidly.

Derek McKenzie was one of four officers and 126 ratings killed during the attack.

He was 29 years old.

Derek McKenzie’s name is commemorated upon the Plymouth Naval Memorial which overlooks Plymouth Sound on Britain’s Devon coast. The Plymouth Naval Memorial lists the more than 23,000 British and Commonwealth sailors who were lost or buried at sea in both the First and Second World wars.

His name is listed here on the Roll of Honour on my left, among almost 40,000 Australians who died while serving in the Second World War.

This is but one of the many stories of service and sacrifice told here at the Australian War Memorial. We now remember Surgeon Lieutenant Derek Napier McKenzie, who gave his life for us, for our freedoms, and in the hope of a better world.