US refuses to add sailors’ names to Vietnam Memorial

The Pentagon has refused a long-standing request to add the names of 74 US sailors who died in a 1969 ship collision to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC. The USS Frank E Evans was participating in a nighttime training exercise in the South China Sea when it turned into the path of an Australian aircraft carrier and was split in half. The World War II-era destroyer's stern section stayed afloat while the bow section sank.

Survivors and relatives of those killed have been pushing the Department of Defence for years to add the 74 names to the wall because the ship had supported ground operations in Vietnam just weeks earlier and likely would've been sent back to the war zone after the exercise. But Pentagon officials in a decision this month stuck to their position that the Evans victims are precluded from being added to the wall because the accident occurred outside the Vietnam combat zone.

It was a decision that angered retired Navy Master Chief Lawrence Reilly Sr, an Evans survivor whose 20year-old son, also named Lawrence, was among those killed.

"I'm not happy with the whole thing," the 92-year-old WWII and Vietnam veteran said from his Syracuse home. "It's a bad deal."

Instead of granting an exemption to the war zone rule, the Pentagon has offered to pay tribute to the fallen sailors by listing their names on a memorial plaque to be placed inside the education centre to be built near the wall. But with less than half of the USD 130 million cost of the centre raised so far, the offer is being dismissed by some Evans survivors.–AP