Greenway Library frieze

As you walk into the library, you won’t be able to miss the frieze encircling the four walls. The 13 murals were painted during the Second World War, when the house was occupied by Flotilla 10 of the U.S. Coast Guard in the preparations for D-Day. They were sailing a new type of landing craft called a Landing Craft Infantry (Large) or LCI(L ) that was capable of landing 200 troops directly onto an enemy beach. Because of its flat bottom and no keel it was unpleasant to sail in and the crew maintained that LCI really stood for ‘Lousy Civilian Idea’. 

In January 1944 a flotilla of twenty four landing crafts together, with their commanders and support staff, arrived in the River Dart from the USA. 51 captains and members of the planning team stayed in the house, and they remained at Greenway until just before D-Day. Many rooms in the house were used as bedrooms for three to four men, and the Flotilla Commander and his two deputies using Agatha’s bedroom itself.

The Library was kept as their recreation and ‘mess room’ with a bar set up in the alcove. During their six-month stay Lt Marshall Lee, one of the landing craft captains who was a graphic artist, painted the twelve coloured murals that make up the major part of the frieze. The murals were painted using just four colours; blue, khaki, black and white, and depict incidents that occurred during their eleven months’ journey to Greenway.

 

 

It starts to the left of the fireplace with the building and commissioning of the LCI(L) at Orange and Houston in America, and then progresses in a clockwise direction around the room. The murals show many of the places they visited including Key West, Norfolk, Bermuda, Port Lyautey, Arzu, Beni Saf, Bizerte. It also shows the enemy actions that they were involved in at Licata and Salerno. It ends over the doorway with their arrival in the River Dart, with Greenway shown perched high above the river and their craft below.  

There is a monochrome mural of a nude lady reclining, which  is still something of an enigma as it doesn't fit with the style or story of the rest of the frieze. It is thought that it may have been painted by the Command Staff that remained at Greenway until they returned to the USA in October 1944. 

 

When the house was unexpectedly decommissioned and returned to Agatha on Christmas Day 1945, she was pleased to see that little damage had been done but was somewhat surprised to find the graffiti left in the library. The commander wrote to Agatha offering to have ‘the fresco’ painted out and, as her autobiography records, she hurriedly wrote back that ‘it would be an historic memorial and I was delighted to have it’.