Armand Lambert's blue gray eyes cloud with pain as he recalls his struggle to stay alive during the war and the dangerous missions he later undertook to save the lives of American soldiers. And Lily Lambert breaks into tears remembering her critical role in sabotaging the advance of the German troops.

To any outsider, the Lamberts appear to be an average all-American retired couple. They have spent the past 58 years in this country--working, raising their two children and sending them to neighborhood schools in Sunnyvale and Cupertino. Few know about the couple's heroic role in the Belgian Underground movement--a clandestine group of patriots determined to oust the German army from Belgium.

It all began on May 10, 1940, when Hitler's troops captured Belgium. What was left of the Belgian government (as many top officials had fled the country) ordered every young man to enlist in the Belgian army to fight the advancing Nazi troops. Armand was 22 and a student of engineering at the University of Charleroi. Lily was working there as the secretary to the university president. "Like many other boys my age, I wore a cap, took a canteen of water and rode my bicycle to join the army at Ypres in Northern Belgium," Armand says.

Along the way, he saw railroads being bombed and families fleeing in all directions, foreshadowing what was yet to come under a total German occupation. "People had not forgotten the horrible acts committed by the Germans during World War I. We grew up listening to these terrible tales from our parents and grandparents," Armand says. By the time he reached Ypres, the German cavalry was gaining ground, and the Belgian troops had been forced to retreat into France. Armand and thousands of other young men like him were ordered to join the army in Rouen, France.

Armand began a long and arduous journey across Belgium southward into France--a journey that changed his life. "By now the Germans were everywhere. They had us totally surrounded. We had nothing to eat. And even water was scarce. And then the German bombers, the Stukas, would fly right above us bombing over our heads even though they knew we were all civilians. It was plain and simple. It was a war against civilians. They were out to kill us," he says.

This was when Armand realized that in war life had no price. Survival was as random as the toss of a coin. "Even to this day I cannot understand how you can raise a whole generation of German soldiers and instill such hatred in them. It is beyond my comprehension," he says.

Armand remembers taking refuge from the bombers behind sandbags. At one point he even tried to escape to England. He came to the port city of Boulonge and tried to escape to Britain on a small boat. But the boat was not working and after a short period of rowing, he made his way back to land.

By then he'd lost his bike and his cap, and his luck took a turn for the worse. In Boulonge he was arrested by the French army and was to be shot dead. "They thought that I was a German spy. At that time my hair was very blond, like the Germans'," he says, touching his head, now full of white hair.

Just before he was to be executed one of the French officers questioned him. "Fortunately my French has a pronounced Walloon accent [French spoken by people in southern Belgium]. The officer knew I could not be German, and they let me go," he says. Armand decided to go back to his hometown. But with the war on, there was no safe road in all of France and Belgium.

Armand says his future was crystallized at the coastal town of Graveline. He was traveling with the French army and had to cross a canal to join the British troops at Dunkurque. The bridge to cross the canal could be lifted and lowered to control traffic. Just as they were about to cross the canal, the German troops caught up with them, and the British raised the bridge and began firing at the Germans. "We were caught in the middle of a war with the German and British troops firing from both sides," Armand says. "We were sitting ducks waiting to be killed. There was shrapnel falling on us from all sides. We were like cattle going to the slaughterhouse."

Armand crawled along the walls of the canal to get out of the battle.

"It was there in the middle of that bloody war that I decided that if I ever got out of this alive, I would leave Europe forever," he says. "I did not come to America like many others looking for the American dream. I just wanted to stay alive. My grandfather had seen three wars, my father two, and I had lived through one already. So I thought to myself that if I wanted to bring up the children I have in the future away from the shadow of war, I had to leave this country and the whole of Europe."

Just when things were beginning to go right, Lambert was arrested at a town called St. Omer. This time the ramifications of the arrest were far worse. He was arrested by German troops. A German soldier had been killed that day, and they didn't know who the assassin was. "They suspected someone from the Belgian Underground movement. So the Germans went on a rampage arresting everyone they could lay their hands on. Unfortunately I was one among them," Armand says.

For four days and nights, Lambert and thousands of others walked through pouring rain, their feet blistered and bloodied. Many were weak with starvation. They walked in single file with German tanks and trucks armed with machine guns on either side. "Occasionally we would hear the gun go off and know that someone had been killed," he says.

They moved at an unforgiving pace, crossing towns and villages across Belgium until they reached a city called Arras, where the captured were to be transported by railroad to a German prison.

When they reached Arras, they were put in a yard. He says French troops and the civilians were in two different groups. "There was a German officer who was checking our papers and then deciding if we would be put in the rail wagon or let go."

Armand says he realized his life would be over if he got on the rail wagon and became a prisoner of war. "I had to do something then," he says. Armand and a friend pretended they were filling their canteens with water from a faucet nearby. They turned back and acted like they had been given a clearance paper by the German officer and made a show of putting it into their coat pockets so the guard at the gate would notice.

"He did and we started walking towards the gate," Armand says. "I was extremely scared. But there was also a certain calmness. If we were caught, I would not be alive to tell this tale today. But the guard assumed we had been cleared, and he let us go."

Armand says initially they walked fearing that with every step they took, they would be called back or shot dead. "But once we were out of their view we ran for our dear lives. Hiding during the day and running in the night until I reached my home in La Hestie."

While death played a close tango with Armand on several occasions during the first few weeks of the war, the German occupation was also leaving an indelible impact on young Lily Leclercq.

Just 19, she was already a part of a secret Underground movement called Les Insoumis, or "The Unsubmissives."

"We Walloonians are very hot blooded. But even I sometimes wonder how I did the things I did then," she says.

As the secretary to the college president, Lily had access to the university buildings and her Underground group met in the basements of these buildings. She was in fact the "Group General of Sabotage" and went by an assumed name--Lyne. "We did not know each other's real names. The less we knew of each other the better it was--in case the Germans captured us. We were prepared for any eventuality. We had doctors to take care of the wounded, and our group was mainly responsible for bombing railroads to prevent the advance of the Germans," she says.

Lily's job was to pass on information about German troop movements and scout for gunpowder.

"I remember I used to pass messages to other Underground groups or to members within my group in the form of coded poems. Even if the Germans saw these letters they would think of it as some silly poetry." Because of her job, she was also the representative of the province where she lived. So she had access to railroad movements and knew people who worked in the local coal mines. She talked them into giving the Underground group some explosives and powders. "But I never bombed anything or even touched a gun," she says.

In the beginning the relationship between Armand and Lily was just casual friendship. He was a student and she was a secretary at the university. But as war exploded around them and Armand came back from his futile attempt to join the Belgian army, their relationship took a more meaningful turn. In April 1941, just before Armand left for Paris to pursue his master's in engineering, the two became engaged.

Lily particularly remembers the first time they kissed. She says the two of them were taking a walk in the woods near the university. By then the British bombers had arrived and were trying to destroy German posts. But German soldiers would hide in the woods and point huge lights at the sky every time an enemy aircraft flew by so they could shoot the planes.

"So the first time we kissed we were in the forest, and we suddenly saw lights go up far away, and then we saw an aircraft being hit and come spiraling down. We did not see what happened to it. But it was quite a memorable kiss," she says.

While Armand lived in Paris studying at a prestigious university, Lily got more and more involved with the Underground activities. "It was very tiring. During the day I would work at the university, and at night I was helping out at the Underground," she says.

One summer day in 1941 as she was returning from work, Lily saw her sister signal the arrival of the Gestapo from her apartment window. "I normally never carry any paper or evidence. But on that day, I had jotted down the movement of the German troops on a sheet of paper. So I quickly folded the paper and stuffed it into the bottom of my powder case and walked into my home," she says.

As she entered her apartment, she found the German Gestapo tearing her mattress apart and searching for evidence. Word had spread that the two sisters were involved in Underground activities.

"We suddenly realized that we had stacks of flyers urging people to join our Underground group sitting in the corner of our kitchen. Thankfully my sister had the presence of mind to rush to the kitchen and open a cabinet and hide these papers, and she offered the soldiers some coffee. That was a narrow escape," Lily says.

In the following years it was mostly luck that helped Lily evade capture by German soldiers. At a time when no Belgian was allowed to cross the border into France without proper documentation, Lily traveled to Paris three times to convey messages from her Underground group.

This was also her chance to meet Armand, who was still studying in Paris. "The third time I had to travel was probably the most dangerous," Lily says. "One of the top leaders in our group had been killed, and I had to travel to Paris with some information. So I tagged along with a French vegetable seller pretending to be her mute sister and crossed the border by cutting some barbed wire fences."

Even today Armand does not know the full extent of his wife's activities in the Underground movement. "I know most of it. But I'm sure there are incidents that I'm not aware of," he says.

Soon after his graduation, Armand got a job at a steel mill at Longwy, France. He was in charge of all the electrical operations at the mill. But the Underground rebels constantly sabotaged the mill's steel production. In retaliation, the German troops who were in control of the mill wanted to take a few workers and managers as prisoners and send them to Germany. Armand refused to go. "I went and spoke to my boss, a very good French man, and told him I could not go to Germany and that I was planning to run away and hide. He assured me that I would have my job once the war ended. And after that I became a wanted man by the Germans," he says.

If he wanted to stay alive and far away from the German radar, Armand had just one option: join the Underground movement. "It was not something I wanted to do. I never wanted to fight. I'd rather be quiet and keep my mouth shut than kill somebody. But the Belgian Underground was the only way I could stay alive."

With Lily organizing his stay with le maquis (the Underground) Armand escaped to a base near Arlon. "Here I lived on a farm pretending to be stupid help with a pitchfork in my hand. Since I could speak in English, my job was to talk to the rescued American pilots and take them back to other groups who would eventually hand them over to the American army," he says.

He was involved in three rescue missions, but the third was the one most fraught with danger. As the American troops were advancing into Belgium, the desperate Germans were still wreaking havoc even as they retreated.

"One day while we were still hosting this American pilot at the farm house, we saw a group of German soldiers arriving," Armand says. "[The Germans'] plan was to use the facilities for as long as they wanted and then blow up the house when they left. So we had to hide the pilot in a narrow space between the ceiling of the ground floor and the floor of the upper floor."

He remembers sneaking in food and water to the soldier without alerting the Germans. A few mornings later, the Germans left when they found out the American army was not far away. On their way out, the Germans blew up a truck full of explosives that was parked just outside the house, and Armand says there was a lot of damage to the farmhouse.

It was Armand's job to take the American soldier through the woods and deliver him to U.S. troops. "But once we got there, nobody really knew what to do with him because he was part of the air force and not the ground troops. They were in fact ready to leave him with me and go on their way to get the Germans. So as the two of us stood there at an empty base with the last of the American troops leaving, one of the officers in the last jeep turned around and signaled to the pilot to join them. I still remember the pilot running down the road as if his life depended on it and jump into the jeep," Armand recalls.

A few months later the war ended and Lambert was back at his job in Longwy. It was there he met Arthur Campbell, a soldier from Minnesota who would later sponsor the Lamberts' visa petition to move to the United States.

The Lamberts were married in 1946 and came to the United States a year later.

Three years ago, Armand went back to Belgium with his son. "I went to the same canal in Graveline where I made the life-altering decision to move out of Europe. I remember telling my son that if it were not for that place and for the walls of the canal that saved my life, he probably would not be living the privileged life in the United States."