At the start of 1918 Portland quarry worker Jim Sansom had been a stretcher bearer in the heat of Egypt for two years. He writes: “Twenty of our fellows got typhus and four died in January but after isolation and rest we were marching back to the front by early Spring”

James was born in 1895 into a Portland Baptist family. At the age of 17 he want to work in Pearce's Quarry with his father and brothers as one of the family crews where sons learned their father's trades.

Olive Harcourt is a singer and musician of international repute who trained in Dresden and lived in Germany for some years. In 1916 she put her musical career on hold to come to Dorset with sister Florence to work as an orderly at Beaucroft Red Cross Hospital in Colehill.

Her diaries are full of colourful stories about life in a small Red Cross Hospital.

Marie Stopes shocked polite society by challenging the Victorian idea that it was improper for a woman to enjoy sex. Her book Married Love, published in March 1918 became an instant best seller with six printings in a fortnight.

Later, in the early 1920s she moved to Portland, Dorset where she founded Portland Museum.

This letter from Lord Devonport asking people to reduce their consumption of bread was in Lady Mary's scrapbook of war cuttings.

Ships were being sunk by U-boats and people were being told to eat less food - by a grocer. “This we did in great measure.” she says

March 6th 1918

Winnifred Marsden, Commandant of Dorchester's Colliton House VAD Hospital received the OBE from HM King George V at BuckinghamPalace.

The hospital, which started with 20 patients in 1914 now has 200 in the house and 14 marquees.

Olive Harcourt was “Epitome of a true Victorian lady”, her ward Joan Cocozza told us at her home in Bristol.

Visitors were announced, gentleman friends kissed her hand, women kissed her cheek.

“It was an utter surprise when I began reading her diaries and learned of the time she cared for wounded soldiers,” she said.

During WW2, Joan, then a young girl, would spend half her week living with her family, and the other half living with Olive at her grand house in Clifton, where Olive taught her to play the upright piano she later left her when she died in 1958.

March 21, 1918 Lady Monkswell: To Mrs Dyer's, as far as Parnham Down with Robert and Lorna. Met Mrs Pitt-Rivers, Lady Avebury’s sister in law. She was in coat and boots - Land Women’s costume, becoming and suitable. Heard of dear beautiful Eric Lubbock's heroic death last year (air man)

Captain Eric Lubbock MC of the 45th Squadron Royal Flying Corps was Lady Monkwell’s nephew. His A1082 Sopwith Strutter was attacked by 2 Albatros D.IIIs and shot down, at Railway Wood near Ypres in 1917. Both Lubbock and observer John Thompson were killed

March 26th 1918

My Book Married Love “to increase the joys of marriage” is finally published today.

I have some things to say about sex, which so far as I am aware have not yet been said......

Along with her diaries, Olive kept notes about her patients, their injuries, humour, mannerisms and of course, their voices. This was probably unusual for a mere orderly but Olive was a well to do woman of means and she was clearly very interested in doing her best for the men she looked after.

She’s obviously amused when one tells her: “Get out we're all eddicated in ’ere”; another mimics the hospital commandant's hymn singing and one of them calls her “Private Harcourt”.

Lady Mary's diary April 17th 1918:

At the time you can force yourself to do anything. Robert’s food was once brought him when shells were flying and he was in the open. He decided to finish before moving under cover.

When he got up to move he found it had affected him a good deal. He found himself half paralysed.

[Mary is recalling Robert’s time with a Royal Field Artillery battery a year earlier. He was injured in early 1917 and spent all of 1918 recovering in Dorset.]

After two and a half years in the heat and dust of the war in Palestine, stretcher bearer and #Portland quarryman James Sansom is on his way back to Europe with thousands of troops from the EEF returning to France to reinforce the Western front @IWM_Centenary @WW1IEPER1917 https://t.co/EQbHYUuEvT

— Voices from 1918 (@VoicesFrom1918) 29 April 2018

After six men were gunned down before him near Boisieux St. Marc in France, Dorset’s Jack Counter dragged himself face down along the ground, through barbed wire with a vital message for HQ.

His action in April 1918 won him the VC for an act of bravery remembered both in Blandford and his later home Jersey.

Private Counter, who died in 1970, was serving in the King's Liverpool Regiment when he volunteered to carry a vital message from the front line “under terrific fire”.

Lady Monkswell: 2.5.18 Letter from 415107 R Burt - Robert’s former batman, injured and working at an “aerodrome in the rear”

My Lord, Pleased to have your letter today but sorry to hear you Lordship is not improving much. Well my Lord, there is no doubt that active service takes it out of you. When one has had over two years and a half of it, it takes its toll. I close hoping that your Lordship will soon be better. Your obedient servant R Burt

A group of First Aid Nursing Yeomanry ambulance drivers photographed #OTD 1918. Discover stories of the FANY's on #LivesOfWW1 https://t.co/sdfNSvEU81 pic.twitter.com/wnqvubwbgi

— Lives of WW1 (@LivesOfWW1) 8 May 2018

A trio of Royal Navy Victoria Cross winners have had memorial paving stones unveiled in the capital. Lts Roland Bourke, Victor Crutchley and Geoffrey Drummond were all honoured for their role in the Ostend Raid. https://t.co/qRLwVokSoX pic.twitter.com/eZInqfSQCM

— Royal Navy (@RoyalNavy) May 9, 2018

Amazing location for the Commemoration of the centenary of the raid on Ostend during the night of 9/10 May 1918. 18 British servicemen died. pic.twitter.com/fv2RXvXx8i

— Alison Rose (@alisonrosefco) May 10, 2018

May 10th 1918
Huge day in Dorset’s naval history. Cdr Godsal, from Sturminster Marshall posthumously awarded the Croix de Guerre and Lieut Victor Crutchley from Nettlecombe the VC for their part in the second raid on Ostend, @BBCDorset pic.twitter.com/UP3GnVhZx3

— Voices from 1918 (@VoicesFrom1918) 10 May 2018

Letter from Alfred Johnson to his wife Essie:

May 22nd 1918. We are having gorgeous weather and are walking about without tunics. I expect some superior officer will shortly object and we shall have an order. "It has been brought to notice that officers are going about without tunics. This practice must cease forthwith."

Sgt Hugh Joseph Kennedy from Weymouth’s Nothe Fort Red Barracks, 2nd left back row joined RAMC’s no1 Stationary Hospital in Le Harvre in Aug 1914, and served in France until March 1919 with promotion to Warrant Officer class one

Based in Weymouth from 1910, He was one of the BEF Britain's regular soldiers dubbed ‘a contemptible little army’ by the Kaiser - the Old Contemptibles. His unit was at Le Mans until Oct 1914, then Rouen through the rest of the war.

We shall remember Sgt Kennedy and his colleagues as we drive around Le Mans on our way back to Dorset tomorrow.

— Nigel Kay (@nigelkay) 25 May 2018

May 23 1918 Lieut Alfred Johnson to wife Essie:

I am on the telephone to-night, a job I don't like. One feels afraid to go really sound asleep. I see you had a pretty big raid on Sunday. He dropped a few round here last night but I was tired after a long day and never woke up.

In April he wrote: I wonder what they would do in this war without telephones. I have answered the blessed thing about 10 times in the last hour. It is very annoying to be rung up by H.Q to know why you have only fired 30 rounds, which they then discover to be the correct amount.

Daily Telegraph: New York, Wednesday 6 June 1918

The tales of suffering and heroism by crews and passengers off the Atlantic coast are bringing home to the American people a fuller realisation of what has been taking place off your coast in the past four years

Daily Telegraph 6 June 1918

Indiscreet Joy

Federal Secret Service agents last night raided several New York clubs, patronised almost entirely by Germans, and broke up gatherings of Germans who were joyously celebrating the operations of the U-boats

June 6th 1918 Field of hay carried. Went to Mrs Bartlett about donkey for Lorna. Enemy at the Marne but “held firmly” there. U-boats on American coast - Stirs them up

June 8th 1918 Came here fortnight today [near Chideock] Watched an air-ship pass close, Lorna waved to it. It hung over Bay all PM. Sea planes came up from both sides, also destroyers, great firing about 11pm. Did they get a U-boat? I think so

Sometimes we can use an account of an event recorded in a diary and do more research to build a fuller picture of what happened.

On June 8th 1918 Lady Mary Monkswell witnesses an attack on a U-Boat - a rare thing for anybody to have seen.

She writes “Came here fortnight today [Chideock] Watched an air-ship pass close, Lorna waved to it. It hung over Bay all PM. Sea planes came up from both sides, also destroyers, Great firing about 11pm. Did they get a U-boat? I think so.”

We know that something happened in the sea off Chideock but what exactly? If we look at records of U-boat losses and U-boat sinkings in Lyme Bay we can see a fuller picture.

18.6.1918 - advert in today's paper

9th July 1918 - A small article on page 7 of the Daily Telegraph says 11 seaman have died on a ship after catching influenza, following 96 deaths last week in Birmingham.

All elementary schools in Wigan have been closed because of the epidemic

Students from the sixth form at Westfield Arts College joined us for a day at Dorset History Centre to explore the archives with engagement officer Maria Gayton and learn more about people’s lives in Dorset in 1918.

They visited the centre climate controlled archive with seven miles of shelves, listened to oral histories and learned about their importance.

Red Cross VAD nurses are back in Dorset 100 years on..serving cream teas! https://t.co/XMfWqgsMa5

— Voices from 1918 (@VoicesFrom1918) 12 July 2018

We are delighted that students from Westfield Arts College are joining us to learn more about life in Dorset as WWI ended. @VoicesFrom1918

— Dorset History Centre (@DorsetArchives) 12 July 2018

July 14th 1918

U-boat UC77 sunk by a mine off Flanders with the loss of all 30 hands. Weeks earlier on June 8th it was the target of an attack off Chideock, Dorset by airships, seaplanes and destroyers witnessed from the shore by Lady Mary Monkswell.

July 15th 1918

Peacefulness at the front has now reached a pitch which may be labelled suspicious, writes the Daily Telegraph. Such periods have generally preceded enemy attacks on a large scale. The paper reports influenza in the enemy is of a "serious character"

Anyone for tea? Students from Westfield Arts College are serving free Cream teas in @Brewery_Square Dorchester on Wednesday (11-1pm) to mark the launch of their silent film Tea for Two. The comedy, set in 1918, is part of their @ArtsAward @shascreenplay @ActivatePArts @artsdevco pic.twitter.com/PDo2H9e7z9

— Alastair Nisbet (@alastair) 16 July 2018

And here is that Lady Mary Monkswell diary entry about the U-boat (UC77 sunk off Flanders on July 14th 1918) that she witnessed on 8 June. @WW1IEPER1917 @LivesOfWW1 @VoicesFrom1918 pic.twitter.com/FKcUoRlV6O

— Dorset History Centre (@DorsetArchives) 16 July 2018

It’s not surprising that the most decorated of all British soldiers during WWI was Private W. H. Coltman, a stretcher-bearer. pic.twitter.com/XRUxNIm1dy

— Lindsey Fitzharris (@DrLindseyFitz) August 8, 2018

'Flappers' has become associated with the 1920s in popular memory, but it was firmly established as a synonym for 'pleasure-seeking young woman' in the Great War

— Peter Stanley (@Stanleyhistory) 15 August 2018

Caroline @SeaFerny enjoying the diary of her great aunt x3 @LadyMonkswell @VoicesFrom1918 @DorsetArchives @HLFSouthWest pic.twitter.com/1kQnXqyOm1

— Sharon Hayden (@shascreenplay) 31 August 2018