WASHINGTON–The Vietnam Veterans Memorial contains over 58,000 names of those lost during the Vietnam War, but for some, the list is still 74 names short.
On June 3, 1969, the USS Frank E. Evans was part of a training exercise in the South China Sea when it collided with an Australian ship, the HMS Melbourne. The Evans snapped in two and sunk almost immediately, claiming the lives of 74 sailors in a matter of minutes. But it wasn’t until years later that family and friends of those lost realized that they were not being treated as casualties of the war with a place on the Vietnam Wall.