A regional newspaper publisher has created an online archive of how people on its patch experienced the horrors of World War Two.

Kent’s War is a digital archive containing tens of thousands of stories, photographs and advertisements published in the Kent Messenger and other publications between 1939 and 1945.

It has been put together by the KM Group and will be launched in September to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of the war.

But visitors to The Historic Dockyard in Chatham this weekend will have the chance of an exclusive preview of the site.

Hundreds of news pages have been microfilmed by Medway-based Microformat and converted to a fully-searchable archive by digitisation experts, Olive Software.

Users will be able to search on dates, family names, place names and key words, and demonstrations will be given in the entrance lobby of the Dockyard’s museum this Saturday, National Armed Forces’ Day.

KM Group managing editor Ron Green says: “I hope people take the opportunity to get a first glimpse of this fascinating website.

“The KM’s war pages provide a first-hand account of every day life as well as the remarkable courage and tenacity of the people in Medway and Kent who endured so much for so long.”