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