not to rebuild there but to concentrate all his efforts in the free zone. A new movement was born from the ashes of Combat Zone nord, Ceux de la Résistance, founded by]. Frenay also declined repeated offers to put himself at the service of the Deuxième Bureau of the Vichy Regime or of the Intelligence service of London, preferring to keep his independence and continue to fight for France alone rather than a foreign power. In the beginning of summer 1942, another network called Carte, which was directly linked to the British Special Operations Executive and therefore better armed at that time than the other French networks in the free zone, took over two of Combat's groups on the Côte d'Azur. Frenay sent a message to the SOE asking them to stop taking his teams away from him. It did not happen again. This may have been due to the displeasure expressed by Frenay in his message, or alternatively to the invasion of the free zone by the Germans a few months later. 1943 After the Allies landed in North Africa, the Germans invaded the free zone. This plunged Combat undercover, since they now had to deal with the well-organised Gestapo. Secrecy and security measures were reinforced. Messages were encrypted, rendezvous locations were specified by letters and generally were moved to outside Lyon, which became by degrees the capital of the French resistance. Arrests took place from February onwards, followed by escapes. Combat was infiltrated by Gestapo and Abwehr agents. In January, the idea of amalgamating the three big resistance movements of the south (Combat, Libération and Franc-tireurs) gradually gained ground, culminating between February and March in Mouvements Unis de la Résistance (MUR). The steering committee of each movement lost much of its importance. Combat was represented on the steering committee of the MUR by Frenay, who was also the commissioner on military affairs of the three networks. The press of the three movements remained independent, and Combat's newspaper continued to exist in its own right. Combat's structure was unchanged by its affiliation to the MUR; it retained a steering committee, and branches for political and military affairs among others. Internal organisation Combat was led by a steering committee, over which Frenay permanently presided. In March 1943, the other five members were Georges Bidault, Claude Bourdet, , , François de Menthon (former head of Liberté), et Pierre-Henri Teitgen. In January