At the outbreak of World War I, Nevinson joined the Friends' Ambulance Unit, which his father had helped to found. From 13 November 1914, Nevinson spent nine weeks in France with the FAU and the British Red Cross Society, mostly working at a disused goods shed by Dunkirk rail station known as the Shambles. The Shambles housed some three thousand badly wounded French troops, who had been evacuated from the Front and then all but abandoned. For weeks they had been left unfed and untended with the dead and dying lying together on dirty straw. Nevinson, alongside his father and other volunteers, worked to dress wounds, help clean and disinfect the shed and started to make it habitable. Nevinson later depicted his experiences in The Shambles in two paintings, "The Doctor" and "La Patrie". As the French authorities began to take control of the situation, Nevinson was reassigned as an ambulance driver. Although Nevinson would often make much of this time as an ambulance driver, particularly in his publicity material, he only held the role for a week as, due to his poor health, he lacked the strength to steer the vehicle. By January 1915 his worsening rheumatism had made him unfit for further service and he returned to Britain.