Five days after the surrender of Dietrich von Choltitz, the German governor of Paris, Albert Ouzoulias ("Colonel André") of the national committee of Francs-Tireurs et Partisans (FTP) called a meeting at which Pierre Georges ("Colonel Fabien") was assigned the task of forming a battalion of resistance fighters.
[1] Colonel Fabien organized a Free French (FFI: Forces Françaises de l'Intérieur) column that left Paris soon after the uprising in that city early in September 1944.
The column was to form the nucleus of a Free French force in Lorraine, which would be joined by volunteers from Paris and the eastern regions of France as soon as possible.
Some FFI units from the Reuilly barracks and Fort de Bicêtre in Paris managed to join the column, despite lack of vehicles and obstacles created by the army.
The force was called the Groupe Tactique Lorraine (GTL) and mostly consisted of FTP veterans led by Communist officers.
Eventually Colonel Fabien managed to join up with General Edwin Walker's corps, and the GTL soldiers received canned food from the US army.
They mixed with the local miners and steel workers, held committee meetings and tried to replace unpopular officers.
The GTL reached Montmédy in late October, where it was joined by an FFI unit from Paris that had managed to evade the authorities.
Some of the soldiers left for civilian life, while others signed up in exchange for promises of full equipment and the benefits provided by the army, expecting conscription to soon be imposed anyway.