Soldiers' food parcels getting lost and delayed, say families

Relatives of serving soldiers are already protesting against being charged £6.50 a time simply to send morale-boosting packages of food to their loved-ones as they fight for their country.

But some packages and mail sent to servicemen and women via the Ministry of Defence have been lost in the post for over a month, or have failed to turn up altogether, adding to the outrage of spouses and parents.

Teresa Theobald, 41, from Ipswich, whose 19-yearold son Graham is in Afghanistan, has launched a petition on the No 10 website for the postal charges to be dropped.

The mother of five, who has spent more than £400 mailing parcels to her son in the past six months, said: "Graham has been receiving letters that are a month old and that's just not acceptable.

"There has been a huge backlog of mail and my son has been getting three weeks' worth of parcels in one week."

The Parcels for Free petition has so far attracted more than 500 signatures and Mrs Theobald has been inundated with messages of support.

One soldier's wife, who asked not to be named,wrote: "The thing that gets to me the most is that our troops in Sangin are not actually getting the mail or parcels we send.

"My husband was one of the lucky ones who got a parcel through but he has still to receive any of the letters his mum and I have sent him.

"It's heartbreaking to think that they are not getting this and all our efforts to keep morale up are in vain."

Families face a charge of £6.50 to send a 2kg parcel to a military depot in London, which is then transported to troops by the MoD.

It would cost the Government an estimated £6million to pay for free postage - a tiny sum compared to the £6billion already spent on the 'war on terror'.

Yesterday an MoD spokesman said: "We have to give priority to equipment that we have to get out.

"Post goes out six days a week but there will be delays because there may be intense fighting and it is a difficult environment to get post out to.

"Over May and June we had several operations going on and air assistance was diverted to help people on the ground.

"That's why delays were incurred because helicopters were not available."