Norwich bulletin., 1917-05-15
STORIES OF THE WAR
Tho Dsstruotion of couey.

A French infantry captain, pressing forward with his men over the crest of the hills that rise above the valley of Ailette, few days ago, saw rising nearly 200 feet from the valley on it's steep acropolis the castle of Coucy, with it's great central tower 2eo rect high and 100 feet In diameter and the smaller towers 114 feet high that crowned the angles of it's walls says correspondence of The Associated Press. The magnificent castle repre- sented some of the most vital chap ters in French history.
 The captain was the last French man to see Coucy in its perfection As he looked there came from the midst of the castle a binding blaze or flame. The keep and the battlements flew asunder, and for the moment everything vanished under an impen- etrable cloud of dust and smoke.
 When. after many minutes. the cloud cleared away. keep and towers and battlements had disappeared as utterly as many-towered CaInelot. All that remained of that fairy dream was a ragged piece of wal pierced by window or two and piles of white, the steep hillside like a 1andship.
 Coucy had been destroyed. Once before in it's history its destruction had been ordered. Mazarin had sent to ground so utterly that men should plough on the ground where once it had been. But that order was never fully obeyed.
 many tons of explosives. to destroy a wonderful and interesting building that had ceased to have any practical military value. From the military point of view they simply wasted this huge quantity of explosives.
 In all this district, says the British eyewitness, the damage done sug gests the work of a band of mischiev- ous savages. Throughout the country between Coucy and Noyon they have sought to annihilate every village by blowing each individual house to atoms. Peasants cottage, walled farm house, rich mems chateau have all suffered the same fate No house was explosive to make 1t a pile of ruins.
 But no cloud lacks its silver lining. In the debris of the ruined houses, the Germans have left inexhaustible material to build up every shelter that the French troops need. For the mend ing of the roads the French now find to their hand all the rubbie they need. The Germans object, no doubt. was to cause misery and privation among the peasants. but they only reused the slow, stubborn, merciiess hatred of the man of the soil who will never forget or forgive.
 Before the German retreat every French soldier was determined to drive the invader from the sacred soil of France. Now the men who have seen their devasted villages and fields are like that regiment described by kipling who had seen It's dead after they had been cut up by the Afga ns For them it is no longer enough that the enemy should be driven out of France.
 The capture of Coucy deserves to ra nk amorg the most brilliant feats of arms of the retreat. After des- troying the castle on the ground that 1t would have a military value to the French. the Germans proceeded to turn the ruins into a fortress which was in modern conditions certainly as formidable as the castle could have been if they had left it intact. They loophoqed the walls that remained and placed machine guns behind them. They built platforms along them for the grenadfers and ~sharpshooters and piles of grenades are still left to show that they had prepared for desperate stand.