He explained that he did this for our own well-being.

Belgian snipers just outside the town had been firing into the passing trains, he said, and a light in a car window was but an added temptation.

He advised us that if shooting started we should drop upon the floor.

We assured him in chorus that we would, and then after adding that we must not be surprised if the Belgians derailed the train during the night he went away, leaving us packed snugly in together in the dark.

This incident had a tendency to discourage light conversation among us for some minutes.
Possibly it was because daylight travel would be safer travel, or it may have been for some other good and sufficient reason, that after traveling some six or eight miles joltingly we stopped in the edge of a small village and stayed there until after sun-up.