Maquis (World War II) of those bands were called "maquisards". Their image was a committed and voluntary fighter, a "combattant", as opposed to the previous "réfractaire" ("unmanageable"). The term became an honorific meaning "armed resistance fighter". The maquis came to symbolize the French Resistance. Most maquisards operated in the remote or mountainous areas of Brittany and southern France, especially in the Alps and in Limousin. They relied on guerrilla tactics to harass the Milice and German occupation troops. The Maquis also aided the escape of downed Allied airmen, Jews and others pursued by the Vichy and German authorities. Maquisards usually relied on some degree
Maquis (World War II) In French Indochina, the local resistance fighting the Japanese since 1941 was backed up by a special forces airborne commando unit created by de Gaulle in 1943, and known as the Corps Léger d'Intervention (CLI). They were supplied by airlifts of the British Force 136. Politically, the Maquis were very diverse, including right-wing nationalists, socialists, communists, and anarchists. Some Maquis bands that operated in southwest France, were composed entirely of left-wing Spanish veterans of the Spanish Civil War. Spanish Civil War veteran Carlos Romero Giménez was a center-democratic liberal operating from Bordeaux. When Germany began a forced labor draft ("Service