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N0KFQ > TODAY 28.03.08 09:00l 46 Lines 2153 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
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Subj: Today in History - Mar 28
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Sent: 080327/1603Z @:N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA #:16000 [Branson] FBB7.00i $:16000_N
From: N0KFQ@N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA
To : TODAY@ALLUS
March 28, 1915
First American citizen killed during WWI
On March 28, 1915, the first American citizen is killed in the
eight-month-old European conflict that would become known as the
First World War.
Leon Thrasher, a 31-year-old mining engineer and native of
Massachusetts, drowned when a German submarine, the U-28,
torpedoed the cargo-passenger ship Falaba, on its way from
Liverpool to West Africa, off the coast of England. Of the 242
passengers and crew on board the Falaba, 104 drowned. Thrasher,
who was employed on the Gold Coast in British West Africa, was
returning to his post there from England as a passenger on the
ship.
The Germans claimed that the submarine’s crew had followed all
protocol when approaching the Falaba, giving the passengers ample
time to abandon ship and firing only when British torpedo
destroyers began to approach to give aid to the Falaba. The
British official press report of the incident claimed that the
Germans had acted improperly: "It is not true that sufficient
time was given the passengers and the crew of this vessel to
escape. The German submarine closed in on the Falaba, ascertained
her name, signaled her to stop, and gave those on board five
minutes to take to the boats. It would have been nothing short of
a miracle if all the passengers and crew of a big liner had been
able to take to their boats within the time allotted."
The sinking of the Falaba, and Thrasher’s death specifically, was
mentioned in a memorandum sent by the U.S. government - drafted
by President Woodrow Wilson himself - to the German government
after the German submarine attack on the British passenger ship
Lusitania on May 7, 1915, in which 1,201 people were drowned,
including 128 Americans. The note struck a clear warning tone,
calling for the U.S. and Germany to come to a "clear and full
understanding as to the grave situation which has resulted" from
the German policy of unrestricted submarine warfare. Germany
abandoned the policy shortly thereafter; its renewal, in early
1917, provided the final impetus for U.S. entry into World War I
that April.
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