If you look past all the guns slung over people's shoulders, the big armoured personnel carriers, humvees and Blackhawk helicopters, you can almost forget there's a war going on.
On the big bases in Iraq there's a certain normalcy that makes you forget there are still people fighting and dying here. But you get reminded real quick. Sometimes it's sombering, like yesterday when one of the soldiers here in Diyala was killed when he chased an insurgent into a house that then blew up.
At every mess hall there's a place set for fallen soldiers and a memorial wall to remind you about those who've died.
Sometimes the reminder comes in other ways, like what happened to me last week while waiting for a helicopter flight out of Balad, a huge base north of Bahgdad.
While flipping through an old Business Week and half glancing at Good Morning America, I was startled to hear a woman's voice come over some hidden P.A. system say "incoming."
I looked up wondering what was up and on the television a message scrolled on the bottom of the screen saying there was a mortar attack.
I looked around from some cue about what to do, but all the soldiers waiting just kept on watching television or reading. I figured they must know what to do under these circumstances so I tried to go back to reading, but just looked at the page and waited. Then I heard a muffled explosion and rumble.
"OK you've officially been fired on," said James Lee, the photographer I'm traveling with.
Two days ago at a base in Diyala province, where the war is very much front and center, I was awoken around 3 a.m. by a load explosion.
The little shack I'm staying in shook and the windows rattled. Over the next hour there were about half a dozen more. I thought they were a volley of mortars hitting the base. "Should somebody do something about that," was all I could think of. Again I had no idea what to do.
The next day I asked a few soldiers who all said they slept through it. A captain later told me that it'd been outgoing artillary. The battery was firing illumination rounds for a group of soldiers on patrol. I nodded as if I knew that all along.