My great grandfather and his brother-in-law (as well as 1.8 million French soldiers) were taken as prisoners and sent to Germany in 1940 as POW. They were liberated around April 1945. Some sick soldiers and those belonging to the sanitary troops (combat medic, doctors, priests...) were (not all of them though) sent back to France between 1940 and 1942. Once in France, they were discharged and some decided to join Resistance groups. Otherwise, in the Vichy zone, there was still a "small army". The troops were mostly used as guards at the boarder between the North and the South until the South was occupied by German troops in november 1942. Others, luckier, escaped before being sent to Germany (like another great grandfather of mine). He went to the South zone (Vichy zone) in 1940 with his family and got papers to work in a factory thanks to an officer who escaped with him. He never wore his uniform again. After the Liberation, the Army was in a pretty bad shape. Luckily, General De Gaulle built another Army (Forces Françaises Libres : Free French Forces) in UK with French soldiers who escaped in 1940 and civilians who fled France. In France, a lot of organized groups, called Resistance groups, became semi-military. Some were added to the French Army at the Liberation. The Free French Forces (which became the French Army of Liberation) of De Gaulle liberated Paris in August 1944 with the Resistance groups.