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.

March 07, 1918 James Sansom: Three miles from the front line. We stay here till the evening of the 8th when we stretcher bearers start for the reserve lines to form an ADS [Advanced Dressing Station]

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

Me unmarried at 30 At 31 I was wed and my marriage had been annulled it had not been consummated so I went off to live in a tent on my own in Northumberland! pic.twitter.com/IyMtIjHoun

— Marie Stopes (@mariestopes1918) March 22, 2018

We carry on for three weeks getting sleep and grub when we can. We see General Allenby up here on many occasions. pic.twitter.com/JlhcmHE988

— James Sansom (@JamesSansom230) March 24, 2018

By the end of March 1918, stretcher bearer James Sansom and the troops on the front line in Palestine reach the Jerusalem to Nablus road, having taken Jerusalem from the Turks at the end of 1917.

March 29th 1918: Stretcher bearer James Sansom of 230th Field Ambulance is in the line on the Jerusalem to Nablus Road with 74th division. A night attack on Amman is being launched in a few hours

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......