TIRDZNISI, GEORGIA — The Georgian soldier sprawled facedown in the ditch, so still that he looked dead at first glance. Skinny arms folded over his head, mouth in the dirt, combat boots braced against the earth. He was cowering at the side of the road in South Ossetia, frozen in place.
Russian jets, wheeling overhead, had just bombed the road, a hot explosion that sent chunks of dirt and broken pavement showering down. The soldier picked up his head. He looked young and underfed, fevered eyes gleaming in a pinched face.
"Please, no run," he said miserably in bad English. He nodded toward the ground at his side and raised his eyes heavenward. "It's Russian MIG."
The soldier was among the Georgian troops sent north up this pitted, twisting main road to bring the rebel province of South Ossetia to heel. But on Monday they were retreating back down it, overwhelmed by relentless Russian air assaults. Moscow's tanks and troops and fleets of warplanes had pushed them out of Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital, and threatened to keep coming up behind them, plunging deeper into Georgia.
Now this road clogged with soldiers was a study in Georgia's predicament, a snapshot of defeat and defiance for a proud country entangled in a fight it has slim chance of winning.
Stretching from the city of Gori, Stalin's birthplace and home to Georgia's main military base, to the war zone of Tskhinvali, the road runs through fields of corn and Queen Anne's lace, overgrown vineyards and apple orchards.
On Monday, it also cut through scenes of vulnerability. There were men being carted wearily south and men being carted nervously north; tanks and artillery guns and armored personnel carriers scattered over sleepy farmland, camouflaged by branches ripped from fruit trees.
Civilians stood along the road, old men and old women, the ones left behind when mothers fled with their children and the younger men joined the fight. Old-timers with bundles of belongings picked their way south on foot, astride farming equipment or packed into overstuffed cars. Stray dogs sprinted down the road, away from the rumble of bombs in the fields.
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With fighter jets whining above and explosions rattling windows, a handful of soldiers bent low, fumbling with a flat tire on their transport truck. "It's coming again!" they hollered, pointing skyward at a jet. "Hide the car!" they shouted at a passerby, as if concealing an aging sedan might keep the Russian pilots from noticing the hulking transport stuck in plain view.
