in 1940, he became a medical officer in the Belgian Air Force.

After the fall of Belgium, Schepens escaped to France where he became active in the French Resistance smuggling documents and people over the Pyrenees to Spain during 1942 and 1943. Schepens was twice captured by the Gestapo. He worked under the alias of Jacques Perot, a lumber mill operator in the French Basque village of