Harry Butters Jr, an American serving in the British army as a second Lieutenant during World War I, is killed by a German shell during the Battle of the Somme in France, becoming the first American citizen to die during World War I.
Butters, born in San Francisco, California and the son of a prominent San Francisco industrialist, was raised partially in England and schooled there at Beaumont College, a Jesuit academy in Old Windsor. Within months of his death, the United States entered World War I, and thousands more Americans followed Harry Butters to the battlefields of France.
