In a City Upended by War, Desperation and Bravado

GORI, Georgia, Aug. 9 -- 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 careened past. Nearby, another priest led a small group of people carrying crosses and praying.

Everywhere in the 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 military reservists idling in the shadows of shuttered shops as they waited to move out and 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 hair long, their faces marked by acne and their weapons uneasy in their grip.

The local 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. Elderly women in blood-soaked bandages lay on cots, four to a room.

The war between Russia and Georgia struck 64-year-old Medico Aniashvili, a farmer's wife, on Saturday afternoon. She said she was standing outside her home when a Russian bomb hit her village just outside Gori.

"The roofs of the houses came off. There were no windows left," said Aniashvili, who now shares a room with three of her neighbors in the hospital here. They consider themselves lucky.

"I counted six dead," Aniashvili said.

In the past two days, 56 civilians have been killed in and around Gori, according to Nick Khipshidze, a onetime Manhattan surgeon who is volunteering here. At least another 200 have been wounded. And, he noted, that's not counting soldiers, who in general have suffered far fewer losses.

Khipshidze 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."

The worst came Saturday morning when Russian bombs struck two apartment buildings. At least 30 people were killed, and Khipshidze said there are probably still bodies in the rubble.

"We're doing the best we can," he said. Most of the injured are quickly transferred to Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, about 40 miles away.

Appearing to look out over the damage was a statue of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. Gori was his home town.

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.

But he doesn't know if he can, because the authorities here have been turning back all "volunteers," telling them that the country's professional soldiers and mobilized reservists will carry the fight to Russia.

"Hopefully, they will take us to Tskhinvali," said Todadze, 45, referring to the capital of the breakaway region of South Ossetia, where intense fighting has taken place between Georgian forces on one side and Russian troops and Ossetian separatists on the other. The city is 20 miles from Gori, and it, too, is rank with death -- the dead mostly civilians, killed by Georgians.

Todadze said he was a veteran of a war in the early 1990s against separatists in Abkhazia, another section of Georgia. That fight was lost. This one he wants to win.

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," Todadze said.