Elgan Jones captures an images of an explosion in Camp Abu Naji

Elgan Jones, 21, from Wrexham, said he was ambushed numerous times by insurgents has he patrolled with the Royal Welch Fusiliers in southern Iraq.

The Royal Welsh Regiment trooper kept an online diary of his experience.

He said: "No matter how much you prepared for it, it was totally different from what I expected."

Mr Jones estimates he was ambushed up to 30 times, during his six-month posting, with hundreds of rounds of bullets and dozens of mortar and rockets being fired at him and his colleagues.

This is how Elgan Jones spent many nights in Iraq

He was not hurt during the fighting but still suffered tragedy when his good friend, Royal Welch Fusilier Stephen Jones, from Llanrhaeadr, near Denbigh, north Wales, was killed in a road accident.

Elgan Jones returned to civilian life on Thursday but said he was still shocked at his experience in Iraq, mostly around the city of Al Amarah.

He said: "It was quite a nerve-wracking time, no amount of training is going to prepare you for that."

"I'm glad to be back, very, very, glad, just so I can get a normal routine rather then being a solider out there.

I was eager to go but it was a really big struggle. We were concentrating on self defence.

"We arrived in the camp and our first patrol went quite well but after that it was more or less continuous attacks - rockets, mortars, you name it.

Elgan Jones took photographs to show what life was like in Iraq

"It was so different from Bosnia. No matter how much you prepare yourself for it, it was totally different from what I expected."

Mr Jones and his colleague at one point drove past Majar el-Kabir, the town where Lance Corporal Thomas Keys, 20, from north Wales, and five other military policemen were murdered by an Iraqi mob.

He said: "We didn't have to go there. We didn't stop."

But one day, when his own patrol was ambushed and pinned down, they had to call for back up and had to run to the Warrior armoured cars sent in to rescue them.

"We ran for our lives, firing back as best we could. We covered about two kilometres."

During all the trauma and conflict, he kept taking photographs of his experience.

'Most people will never understand'

The Ministry of Defence approved his request to post the photographs and the journal he kept on a website run by the service provider AOL.

The pictures quickly proved popular, landing 24,500 hits a day compared to the site's usual 900.

Mr Jones said: "Most people will never understand, or imagine, the situations, feelings and experiences that every man jack who has been based in Al Amarah has experienced."

"I've had e-mails back from families of people who are out there now. They are grateful to have some sort of insight what its like every day.

"It was the little things. It was just what we saw."