Mencken gives a short list of WWI UK word innovations, and mentions "strafe" as one of them.
"Nor have they the fine American hand for devising new verbs; to maffick, to limehouse, to strafe and to wangle are their best specimens in twenty years, and all have an almost pathetic flatness. "

He seems to think the British origated it. Hardly, it is
a German word meaning basically "to punish". It was used
particularly to refer to a German warplane at low altitude shooting machine guns into a long straight section of
trenches. In both wars "Strafe" was also used in propaganda
such as "Gott strafe England" = (roughly) "May God punish England".

You may not remember "maffick" = noisy celebration, such as first celebration of a victory at Mafeking, in Boer War, in 1900.