John Worsley joined the Royal Navy in 1939. His depictions of life on board ship were soon acquired by the War Artists Advisory Committee (WAAC), and he was quickly made an official war artist, assigned to the Mediterranean.
During his Mediterranean service, Worsley was involved in secret operations such as landing partisan guerrillas and secret-service agents, and rescuing escaped British -prisoners. During one such mission, a German force captured him and his friend Guy Morgan, who was wounded in the action. Their transfer to prisoner-of-war camp in Germany was harrowing, including a bitterly cold cell in Yugoslavia, travelling hundreds of miles by train and air raids in Berlin. This drawing served as an illustration for Morgan’s memoirs, 'Only Ghosts Can Live' (1945).
The men were sent to the naval officer's prison camp of Marlag ‘O’ at Westertimke, near Bremen in north Germany, where Worsley spent the rest of the war.