Unsure how long they will still have a Kosovo left to liberate, volunteers of the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army have been streaming south from their homes in Western Europe to fight for the province.
Thousands of would-be troops from among Europe's large ethnic Albanian emigre population are massing on Kosovo's border with Albania, joining units which have manned training bases in the region for the past year.
"They are coming in all ways - by buses, cars, trains, and planes," said a KLA spokesman, Mr Pleurat Sejdiu. "About ten thousand people will be ready in a couple of days."
The rebels will launch a last-itch attack from the border into Kosovo, throwing its units against the well-armed Yugoslav army troops and tanks. Their objective, and their planning, remains hazy. A direct attack, without artillery support, against dug-in tanks could prove suicidal.
But with the entire province being "ethnically cleansed", with horror stories mounting by the hour, commanders say that without this attack, their army will soon have no purpose. "We will try to save what can be saved," Mr Sejdiu said.
Hundreds of Albanian men, with uniforms but no guns, are pouring through Italy, taking the thrice-daily ferry to Albania. Air traffic has been suspended since NATO began air strikes.
Once in Albania, units are linking up with forces already there. In the past 12 months the guerrillas have depended on a supply chain leading through Albania and through mountain paths into Kosovo proper.
The KLA has depended on the organisation, and financing, from the 300,000-strong diaspora, mostly in Germany and Switzerland. Many of its soldiers trained - without guns - in the Swiss Alps before the war proper began.
Machineguns and grenades have been bought cheap in Albania, after half a million guns were taken in a looting of army bases during riots in the country in 1997. But the KLA has no heavy weapons, and their few mortars and anti-tank rockets are no match for a well-organised army.
This coming battle seems likely to reflect the well-known strengths - and weaknesses - of the KLA. It is a firm logistical organisation (its chief treasurer is also a Swiss-based fund manager) but has poor military skills.
Many rebel units have fared badly in combat. "They think they can go over the border into Albania, have a day of training, then come back and fight," said a member of the failed peace monitoring mission which pulled out of Kosovo this month. "It takes six months even to train a British squaddie in the basics."
The KLA remains in contact with several of its seven regional commands in Kosovo. Although the KLA has lost territory there, it has not lost casualties.
Mr Sejdiu also offered a possible explanation of the arrival in neighbouring countries of so many women and children refugees without their menfolk. Rather than being slaughtered, these Albanians might have left their men at home to fight. "For the last week the KLA has had to deal with all the women and children. Now they have got them out of the way, now they can fight," he said.
NATO intelligence says the KLA controls three oval-shaped areas set in a line running northeast into the middle of the province from the Albanian border. But these units are now facing the massed guns of the Yugoslav army with an estimated 30,000 troops and two tank brigades deployed.
The rebels can only mount "irritation" attacks on Yugoslav units. Some commanders clearly hope that NATO's Phase Two bombing will help level the playing field. But it seems likely that NATO will soon face a stark choice - invade Kosovo, or see "ethnic cleansing" empty Kosovo of its two million Albanians.