"if you see the bear coming, you either get under a rock or out of the way.”

The soldiers, trained by US and Israeli advisers, are gung-ho about returning to the fray once they recover and re-equip.

Major Malkhaz Dumbatze was in a celebratory mood. His 14 Georgian tanks had just taken control of the rebel South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali, and he was already looking forward to a trip to Israel to study new battle command systems. The jets flying over the city, where his men were mopping up Ossetian snipers, he took to be Georgian fighters.

Major Dumbatze is still going to Israel, but now it is to have reconstruction surgery on his legs. The aircraft he had spotted were in fact Russian, and one of them dropped two bombs on his armoured unit.

Speaking with difficulty because half his teeth had been blown out by shrapnel that exited through his throat, the battalion commander was undaunted about the future of his crushed army.

“I'm 100 per cent sure we'll recover from this,” he said, his wounded comrades on either side of his bed in a Tbilisi hospital. Georgia's soldiers, trained by US and Israeli advisers