Mines to the right of them, mines to the left of them . . . From the publicity attending today's much-delayed move into Kosovo by NATO, one would think British paratroopers spearheading the operation were going into a "Charge of the Light Brigade" tussle against Serb booby-traps.
In fact, those mines will be the least of NATO's problems.
They might look similar on TV, but Kosovo 1999 is not Bosnia 1995. For one thing, NATO moved into Bosnia only after they had worked out a peace deal. No such deal has been agreed in Kosovo. NATO has no clear policy beyond getting the refugees home.
Bosnia also saw the demilitarising of the rival armies. But in Kosovo, although the bulk of the Serbian army is pulling back, local paramilitary units and police are staying put, for the simple reason that they live there.
The Albanians, too, are keeping their guns. The Kosovo Liberation Army went into this war as a ragtag bunch of guerrillas. It has emerged as a force 30,000-strong, and says it will slim down but remain as an army.
All of which leaves NATO entering a land that is a patchwork of angry militias. Worse, these militias have very different ideas of the kind of Kosovo they want to see.
The Serb paramilitaries have already demonstrated what kind of province they want, one without Albanians.
The KLA, on the other hand, says the only long-term guarantee of safety is independence from Yugoslavia. The war, in other words, will go on, tempered perhaps by the presence of NATO.
Bosnia's peace operation began with a governing structure already agreed. Kosovo's begins without such a plan.
The best NATO can do is agree on the implementation of the Rambouillet peace plan, which was devised, but never signed, by the Serbs in February.
The plan provides for self-government, but not independence, for the Albanians, but, unlike Bosnia's Dayton peace agreement, it is only temporary.
The Rambouillet plan is to last three years, after which the document says that the "final status" must be determined. In other words, no one can agree on anything.
The West still believes things may come right. The British and Americans say that within these three years President Slobodan Milosevic will somehow fall and the Serbs will elect a more liberal government which will then make its peace with both the West and Kosovo's Albanians.
Bosnia's peace has held, though the wounds remain deep, in part because the country is divided.
Although the West insists otherwise, it is effectively two nations, one controlled by the Serbs, the other by their Croat and Muslim enemies.
Kosovo has no such luxury: less than 8 per cent of the population are Serbs, but they are widely dispersed across the region. Already these communities are preparing for self-defence.
In the countryside, every Serb village is within sniper range of an Albanian one. In Pristina it is worse: the population is interspersed among the tower blocks. Bosnia was difficult enough, with enemies one day expected to live together in the same country the next day in peace. Now in Kosovo, the West expects enemies to live next door to each other.
And NATO will be a bad referee. In Bosnia it could present itself as a neutral arbiter, but in Kosovo it is entering having bombed Serbia to its knees; poor credentials for claiming to be an "honest broker."
The United Nations would like the job, but proved in Bosnia to lack teeth, a referee without a whistle.
And then there are the Russians.
NATO, worried that a Russian sector would become the basis for partition of Kosovo, hoped to forestall such a move by declaring that NATO forces would occupy all the key population centres, the British in Pristina, the Americans in the quiet south-east, the French in the north-west, and so on.
The Russians could come, could be independent, but would have to find their way among a province carved into NATO sectors.
Instead, the Russians have simply announced they will carve out a zone for themselves.
Now, as the armies of the West and East scramble to be the first into this Kosovo town and that village, a confrontation with Cold War overtones is looming, with the possibility that Albanians and Serbs will each play their big-brother allies off against the other.
This week NATO, almost unnoticed, has lost much of its leverage. It is now unlikely that the bombers can be brought back, or that troops will force either Albanians or Serbs to disarm or behave themselves at gunpoint.
Nor can a NATO soldier force the two enemies to set up and run a government administration. Not for the first time, NATO may be defeated not by tanks, but by the armed civilians it lacks the political consensus to confront.