A BOLTON mother has revealed her soldier son is having to sleep on a wooden pallet in the desert as he prepares for a possible war with Iraq.

The mother, who cannot be identified for fear of identifying the 23-year-old son, says her son and his fellow soldiers were given wrong uniforms and no boots before they flew out to Kuwait.

Her infantry soldier son, who has been in the Army for four years, says British soldiers are sleeping on wooden pallets and are desperate for decent food.

A recent letter asked for food parcels, which she has been sending out. The last two parcels she sent cost her £15.

She said: "Before they went, he came home with some trousers that needed patching up because there wasn't enough to go around. He had been given 36-inch trousers, when he's a 28 waist and they hadn't got the desert boots they needed so were having to wear their normal black boots.

"He had been there a week before I got a letter and he said there were no showers. He wasn't complaining, but he was asking us to send him things, like babywipes and noodles. He said they were sleeping on wooden pallets on the sand."

Another Bolton mum is sending food parcels every other day to her son after she received two letters, describing how poor the British facilities were. A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence said there had been problems with supplies for British forces in the MIddle East and they were being "addressed".