Robert Mead, Press Officer for Colchester Garrison and a former newspaper reporter, recently made his first trip to Iraq spending a week visiting British troops from the King's Own Royal Border Regiment, the West Midlands Regiment, and the 2nd Battalion, The Parachute Regiment.

Firstly, if you've never been before, be under no illusion that this is not your average package flight to a hot and sunny clime.

When you come into land at Basra at night (because landing in the daytime is too dangerous) and all passengers are told by the cabin crew to don their helmets and body armour, while the plane bobs and weaves so as not to present a target for ground attack, you know you are not going to be sunning it up on the beach.

For the week I recently spent at Basra air station and Camp Smitty, home of Colchester-based 2nd Battalion, The Parachute Regiment, near the southern town of As Samaweh, I was to become intimately acquainted with my body armour.

No-one, military or civilian, goes anywhere without it at night, and most keep it with them or close to hand during the day.

This was my first time in Iraq, and I had little idea of truly what to expect.

Western media gives the impression that everywhere in the country you are only a car bomb or suicide bomber away from death.

While this seems to be the case in the flashpoint areas of Baghdad, Basra city and other towns such as Al Amarah, other areas of Iraq seem relatively, and strangely, quiet. At least they did to me.

My trip was book-ended by two tragic events. The day I travelled was the day the Golden Shrine in Kabalah was blown up, one of the holiest shrines to Shia Moslems, and the day I flew back was the day of the tragic deaths of two members of 2 Para in Al Amarah, blown up in a car bomb attack.

However, in all the time I was there, spending most of my time within camp, I had the general feeling of safety, and indeed detachment from the goings on outside. Conditions are fine, the food is excellent, air-conditioning is ever-present, the gym is amazingly well-stocked, wide-screen televisions are everywhere, and the weather is hot.

Not only that there are Iraqis everywhere in camp. Whether they be local civilians working in largely domestic positions, or the recruits at the Police Academy in Al Muthana, being overseen by 2 Para, or the Iraqis Security Forces permanently based at Basra air station.

But this feeling of safety was also partially true when I did get out of camp on a four vehicle patrol with Cambrai Company, the West Midlands Regiment, in the villages around Basra.

Travelling in an armour plated Land Rover, the same type of vehicle used by the Paras in Al Amarah, dressed in your body armour and surrounded by soldiers feels about the safest way to travel. But everywhere we went through villages on the outskirts of Basra, children rushed up to wave at us as we went by, adults carried on their merry way, cars dutifully pulled over when flagged down and people were perfectly civil and understanding. It was the same when we stepped out of the relative safety of our vehicles as the soldiers conducted Vehicle Check Points or as we patrolled on foot across mudbanks along a riverside, looking for signs of mortar attack, with children happy to say As Salaam Alaykum to the soldiers. Partial proof that the majority of Iraqis seem happy enough for us to be there.

And even when there is a mortar attack, you can't help feeling this is far worse than it sounds. All you hear is a siren going off, the sign for you to don the body armour and helmet again, while you sit tight for 30 minutes. Invariably the mortar is a single shot, two or three at most, and almost all miss the target by some distance.

And what of the soldiers themselves? Do they think about the possibility of dying every time they wake up or go on patrol? I know I didn't. Many are pleasantly surprised by how friendly the Iraqis are, and that in truth was my only experience, of welcoming locals.

I don't doubt that for me it was a mixture of arrogance, stupidity, over-confidence and complacency, but these are not emotions that any soldier can entertain for long. And it can't help when they know that not only do they have to keep one eye on their own lives, they also have the inconvenience of a member of the Media Ops staff who is blissfully unaware of just how dangerous it can be and is probably being far too gung-ho for his own good.

So as I was preparing to leave I felt it had been all something of an adventure. Then reality, in the form of the car bomb in Al Amarah, stepped in as it always does, and reminds you that I only had to spend a week there, all our British soldiers don't have that luxury.