plans to honour A LOCAL HERO

Albert was born in Bermondsey in 1898 and joined the Boys Service of the Royal Navy in 1913 at the age of 15. In 1918 he volunteered for a mission to attack the Belgian port of Zeebrugge with the aim of blocking the canal entrance and preventing German ships from leaving.

Just after midnight on the 23 April 1918, St Georges Day, Captain Alfred Carpenter RN brought HMS Vindictive alongside the harbour wall known as ‘The Mole’. Albert, carrying a Lewis gun and 400 rounds of ammunition, engaged the German positions.

After a vicious battle the troops were ordered to withdraw and, with his Lewis gun blown from his grasp, Albert fought his way back using his pistol, bayonet and bare hands. Badly wounded in the back and foot, he was eventually pulled to safety.

Young Albert was the first London sailor to be awarded the VC, after being nominated by his comrades.

“Able Seaman McKenzie was selected by the seaman of the Vindictive Iris 11 and Daffodil and of the naval assaulting force to receive the Victoria Cross”

On 31 July 1918 Albert went to Buckingham Palace, accompanied by his mother and sister Mary, to be presented with the Victoria Cross by King George V in the presence of the other Zeebrugge heroes.

“Mrs McKenzie has lost a son but the nation has found a hero

Sadly, while recovering from his wounds in Chatham Naval Hospital, Albert contracted pneumonia and died on 3rd November 1918, aged just 20, one week before the Armistice.

Albert had been a member of the Decima Street boys’ club, founded as a branch of the Oxford and Bermondsey Club that survives to this day in Webb Street, and the initiative to create a memorial has come from the club.

The Albert McKenzie Memorial Fund was set up and a committee formed to oversee the project. The committee includes Simon Hughes, MP for Bermondsey and Old Southwark, Martin Fitzgerald and Ian Yates, Co-Chairmen of the Oxford and Bermondsey Club, and Paul Keefe, Chairman of the Albert McKenzie Fund.

The proposed statue would be manufactured using some of the original materials, concrete and metals from the Zeebrugge dockside, by blacksmith and sculptor Kevin Boys.

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