Diary December 20, 1917

12-1917, Diary WWI, War Diary, Year 1917 / 1 minute of reading

British field artillery in Palestine — British field artillery prepares for combat in Palestine.

World War One Diary for Thursday, December 20, 1917:

Middle East

Palestine – Battle of Jaffa (until December 22): XXI Corps’ 8,100 men and 88 guns surprise cross river Auja on December 21, take 259 PoWs and 5 MGs from 6,200 Turks with 60 guns. 6 Royal Navy ships and 36 Royal Flying Corps planes aid 52nd Division 5-mile coast advance to Arsuf on December 22, Jaffa put out of Turk gun-range. 54th Division captures Bald Hill and two villages inland.

Western Front

France: Petain Directive urges defence in depth (and on December 22) but not all generals comply.
Flanders: Germans capture fog-shrouded British advanced post west of Messines.

Eastern Front

Don: Kornilov arrives at Novocherkask, is made White C-in-C.

Home Front

Austria: Lower House adopts peace resolution.
Australia: Second referendum again defeats conscription 1,181,747 vs 1,015,159 votes; 1918 recruiting falls to c.2,500 per month.
Russia: Bolshevik Cheka Secret Police founded under Pole Dzerzhinski to ‘fight counter-revolutionaries and saboteurs’.

About The Author

Kretaner

My name is Norman 'Kretaner' and since my childhood I am interested in history and strategy games. Later, I have learned programming and the development of computer games, and finally with the Internet, also web design. I'm in the fortunate position to combine all my interests with my work and to live on a place of my choice, on Crete. All information, figures, specifications and statistics used here had been compiled from a variety of sources and the large, over decades collected, library of the author about military history, WW2 and weapons.