Gori, Georgia

On a street in this central Georgian city Saturday, an Orthodox priest standing by the side of the road splashed holy water on the cars that went past. Nearby, another priest led a small group of people carrying crosses and praying.

Everywhere in this frontline city in the two-day-old war between Russia and Georgia there was a sense of desperation. And bravado.

The streets, largely empty of civilians, were full of Georgian reservists idling in the shadows of shuttered shops as they waited to join the fight against Russian forces that have bombed the city twice in as many days.

Among them were latter-day Rambos in bandannas and middle-age men with potbellies and red faces. And there were some who looked like kids, their faces marked by acne and their weapons uneasy in their grip.

The hospital, decrepit and dank, echoed with agitated voices and, outside, the hurry of ambulances. The floor of the elevator up to the wards was smeared with fresh blood.

Nick Khipshidze, a onetime New York City surgeon who is volunteering here, said he has lost count of the number of people he has operated on in the past 72 hours. "Dozens?" he said. "I don't have a figure."

Georgi Todadze, dressed in surplus army fatigues, a beer by the gearshift, drove a Nissan sport-utility vehicle from Tbilisi to Gori on Saturday afternoon. He said he wants to fight and hopes the Georgian Army will give him a gun.

Todadze, who has a 16-year-old daughter, said his wife cried when he put on his military gear Saturday morning.

"I told her this needs to be done, and I just left," he said.

On the way to Gori, he and a friend, another hopeful volunteer, stopped at a pharmacy to buy wound wraps and thick rubber bands to stop any bleeding.

They also tossed some coins onto the road. For good luck.

"So we will come back."

With the phone lines jammed, text messages were the only thing connecting her in Vladikavkaz, Russia, to her relatives in Tshinvali, who were running out of food and water as they hid in basements in the besieged South Ossetian capital.

So Gagloeva typed back encouraging notes: Tanks have arrived! They're talking about it in New York!

"They wrote back with such enthusiasm," said Gagloeva with a little sadness. "It was very touching."

People who live in Tskhinvali know what it is like to be trapped by ethnic violence. The divisions run so deep that ethnic Georgians and Ossetians have separate gas and electric grids, said Magdalena Frichova of the International Crisis Group.

The culture is so schooled in ethnic warfare that in the summertime, when conflicts tend to heat up, university students are sent out to man trenches and fortifications between Georgian and Ossetian territory.

"People are just extremely traumatized," she said.

Zema Vazhenina, 26, described three days spent stuck in her Tskhinvali home while the walls and ceiling shook from the artillery shelling.

When she finally emerged, she said, "It looked like the end of the world."

As columns of Russian armor crawled up the deep passes of the Caucasus Mountains on Saturday toward the border with South Ossetia, a stream of refugees arrived in buses from the south.

Lara Goyeva, a 28-year-old musician, told of being rocketed and shelled by Georgian troops, and finally escaping to make the journey north. She said she saw many people injured.

Valentina Beskayeva, who works for a Russian construction company, waited at the border crossing for almost two hours, hoping to spot her mother, sister and 8-year-old son, Alan, on one of the refugee buses. The three, she said, lived in Tskhinvali, the center of the fighting.

She said that she had spoken to her son on Friday and that there had been fighting near the house, but that he proudly told her he hadn't cried, saying "I am a man."

The 41-year-old woman said with tears in her eyes that her father had been killed in fighting in Abkhazia , another breakaway region of Georgia, in 1994.

"Why is there war?" she said. "People fight and die for a few square meters of land. Why?"

Russian authorities reported that 34,000 refugees crossed the border into Russia over the past week -- a striking number, considering that the population of South Ossetia, which includes ethnic Georgians, is estimated at about 72,000.

"I am going to help our people," said Zelimkhan Gagiev, 27, an irregular fighter in a maroon four-wheel drive who said he had family trapped in Tskhinvali. "If I can I'll fight to the death."

One of the fighters, who gave his name as Zaur, said South Ossetia's history was a struggle against tyranny. "They are guilty, they started the fighting," he said of the Georgians.

The columns were headed to the Roki Tunnel, cut through a ridge of mountains to give access to South Ossetia. Asked whether Georgia and Russia were headed for war, a soldier who gave his name as Alexei, grinned. "If there is, it won't last long."