As regions of France were liberated, the FFI were more formally organized into light infantry units and served as a valuable manpower addition to regular Free French forces.

General Patch estimated that from the time of the Mediterranean landings to the arrival of U.S. troops at Dijon, the help given to the operations by the FFI was equivalent to four full divisions.

[3] According to a volume of the U.S. official history of the war, In Brittany, southern France, and the area of the Loire and Paris, French Resistance forces greatly aided the pursuit to the Seine in August.

In late August 1944 incidents of FFI misbehavior occurred in the region of Paris, highlighting the risks of having an armed and organized citizenry that suddenly found itself without a mission.

De Gaulle believed France required a single decisive leader to restore effective government.

Some of these units were used to besiege German troops in still-occupied French ports or to secure France's alpine frontier with Italy, others were used to secure Allied lines of communications in France, and still others were assigned as army reserve units for the use of General de Lattre de Tassigny's French First Army.

Amalgamation was successful in varying degree; the training, tactics and attitudes of the former French Resistance fighters often differed from those of the regular soldiers with whom they served.

By force of circumstances the personalities of the leaders had played a determining role and had stamped each maquis with a different brand.

organizations, their at least peculiar discipline, the differing quality of their groups, the poverty of their equipment, the crying inadequacy of their armament and supplies, the heterogeneity of their officering, the facility with which their superior ranks had been assigned, and in certain cases the ostensibly political nature of their aims, ran counter to the classical military outlook of many officers, some of whom, in reaction, exaggerated their regulation strictness.

Because of the mix of American, British, French, German, and other weapons, the supply of ammunition and spare parts was complicated and often difficult to accomplish.

[10] In other cases, FFI units used vehicles no longer favored by Allied forces, such as the U.S. M6 Fargo, a light truck with a portee 37 mm antitank gun.

[12] Although the amalgamation of the FFI was in some cases fraught with political difficulty, it was ultimately successful and allowed France to re-establish a reasonably large army of 1.3 million men by VE Day.