Maquis (World War II) du travail obligatoire, STO") in France at the beginning of 1943, thousands of young men fled and joined the Maquis. The British Special Operations Executive (SOE) helped the Maquis with supplies and agents. The American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) also began to send its own agents to France in cooperation with the SOE and the French BCRA agents, as part of Operation Jedburgh. The British government provided supplies and support to assist Charles de Gaulle to unify the Free French resistance movement. Prior to the inception of the maquis, small resistance groups were created in the occupied and unoccupied
Maquis (World War II) who have given up trying to live a normal life[...]. They totalled about 48,000". A popular maquis band, the "Maquis de l'Ain", was captained by Henri Petit (alias Romans), who organized a network of camps in the dense forests in the mountainous regions of "le Bugey" and the lower regions of "la Bresse", without creating a fixed camp. This gave “primacy to isolation from all habitation, but also to sites which permitted hasty retreats”. The enemy would not be able to surprise the maquis because the views from the hills were extensive, but some enjoyed this advantage and stayed in