Apprehensive? Oh Yes

The steel hatch swung up behind me like a drawbridge and snapped shut. My fate was sealed. I was sitting inside an armored, eight-wheel Stryker vehicle and would spend the next 10 hours patrolling 'al-Qaida's last stronghold in Baghdad'. Apprehensive? Oh yes.

Fortunately the Stryker is probably the best there is and, I was told, able to withstand roadside bombs, the improvised explosive devices that have taken such a terrible toll on US forces. I tried not to think about the even more lethal explosively formed projectiles, which fire a slug of molten metal capable of penetrating the thickest armor.

With body armour, helmet, notebook and camera, I was sitting towards the rear of the Stryker with my back to the driver, in the middle of four soldiers who spent much of the journey standing at turrets with assault rifles. To my left and right were TV screens, clusters of wires and control panels, a fire extinguisher, an industrial strength laptop and, I noted, a box of sweets and an iPod. A thin film of sand clung to everything.

If I turned and looked over my shoulder in the half-light, I could see another bank of screens. One seemed fixed on a patriotic image of an US bald eagle spreading its wings paternally over heroic troops and vehicles. On another was a satellite photograph of Baghdad with blue icons representing important locations. Most fascinating was a laptop showing a live, roving aerial view beamed to us by a remote-controlled drone known as a Raven. Occasionally, after shivering and distorting for a moment, it would fix a suspicious vehicle in its cross hairs.

All in all, amid the beeps and voices crackling over the radio, it was like being inside a windowless submarine or space capsule, with a similar sense of venturing into the unknown as we passed beyond the perimeter fence which makes the vast US military base Camp Striker something of a safe haven.

On yet another screen I could follow our progress via an external camera. It showed a series of streetlights and palm trees flowing against the sky, and sometimes caught the sun as a bright, beautiful circle. Finally, after a bumpy ride, it showed buses, cars, billboards, bridges, mosque domes, telegraph poles, and rubbish-strewn streets. We were in town.

The confidence of the 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment platoon was infectious. If you had to trust your life to anyone, these professional men with their hi-tech weapons would be high on the list. Yes, they said, they still feel fear, but with routine they learn to control it: fear breeds alertness, and is better that than getting cocky or casual.

So when we finally halted and the hatch lowered itself to the ground I didn't feel like a rabbit desperate to bolt for its burrow. I stepped into the sunlight and found a city like any other, yet not like any other: a street corner, a hardware shop, a child wearing a Chelsea badge. But also a building blackened by a recent bombing, a pile of rubbish turning rancid in the road and a deserted house with its windows shattered.

I got on with the journalism, interviewing an Iraqi man who said security was improving but asked how I would feel if, like him, had seen a family member bleed to death in the street because of a lack of medical provision. Later, a lieutenant-colonel remarked that this interviewee had been directing everyone on that street through his body language. I hadn't noticed.

We visited a school - a safe house for Iraqis to provide information - a baker who fed us freshly cooked bread and numerous other stop-offs in al-Hadar, once one of Baghdad's most affluent suburbs. It's become something of cliche but US soldiers really did spread goodwill by pretending to spar with children, play football with them and throw them sweets. One has been nicknamed the "mayor" because residents go to him with their complaints about drains, rubbish collection and so on.

Darkness closed in and we ground to a halt. The hatch opened again but this time the vehicle commander told me: "David, I'm gonna leave you in here because we're dealing with a sniper and I don't want you to get shot." Sniper fire, aimed at nearby Iraqi security volunteers, had hit some water 20 meters from us. The gunman had vanished into the darkness.

On our way back, the troops had got used to me, or maybe forgotten my presence. There was talk of baseball and ice hockey rivalries and the swearwords flew thick and fast. Back at base, the care they had shown me all day extended to handing me a takeaway meal.