The 28,000-string infantry, the main supplier of troops in Iraq, is 1,859 men under strength, reported the Sunday Telegraph on October 30, citing a Ministry of Defense document.

This figure will rise to 2,288 -- about eight percent of the total -- by next March, it added.

The document, which was drawn up by the infantry's headquarters, also shows that none of its eight divisions will meet their recruiting targets.

Last week, Gen. Sir Mike Jackson, the Chief of the General Staff, denied in an interview on Radio 4 the army had any recruitment shortages.

The infantry feeds most of the 8,500-strong regiment serving in Iraq.

A further 3,200 soldiers who are due to be deployed to Afghanistan next April will come mainly from infantry battalions.

The US Army, which provides most of the US ground troops in Iraq, has also slipped behind its recruiting goals, as officials offered privileges and incentives to lure wary potential recruits.

The new Pentagon recruiting figures during the fiscal 2005 recruiting year, which ended on September 30, showed that the regular Army was 17 percent behind its goal, the Army Reserve was 20 percent behind and the Army National Guard was 24 percent behind its end-of-May plans.

Bounty

"The army is addressing its recruitment shortfall in several different areas, " a defense ministry spokesman told the newspaper.

The daily said this includes paying 500 pounds (890 dollars, 735 euros) to soldiers who persuade friends to sign up.

The Army Training and Recruitment Agency plans to introduce the 500-pound incentive during a six-week period over Christmas.

The scheme will be a trial that could be extended if successful.

"The recruit bounty was an important recruiting tool, but it was abandoned for cost-cutting reasons and now we have an emergency situation inside the Army that could have been avoided," Patrick Mercer, a Tory MP and former infantry commanding officer said.

Quitting

Iraq war has not only deterred plans by recruitment agencies, but it has also played havoc with already serving recruits.

The Sunday Times reported that the 35,000-man Territorial Army (TA), made up of part-time reservists, had difficulties keeping recruits.

The TA has gone down to its lowest since it was founded in 1907 as more than 6,000 troops have quit in the past year because of the Iraq campaign.

According to the daily, only 24,000 troops are fully trained and in practice only 12,000 TA soldiers are now available to back up the regular army on operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It said the defense ministry has repeatedly denied that the TA is in trouble because of the Iraq war, but the figures released to parliament last week show the situation is far worse than previously claimed.

The numbers of soldiers leaving the voluntary force more than quadrupled in the six months immediately after the Iraq invasion in 2003 to some 600 a month, Don Touhig, a junior defense minister, told MPs.

Iraq war prompted the first compulsory call-up of reservists from all three services since the Korean war in the 1950s.

Some 12,580 were mobilized and five reservists have been killed.

Feeling dragged into an increasingly intractable, indefinite struggle, the moral among British troops in Iraq are at its lowest since the US-led invasion of the Arab country in 2003, The Independent reported on Tuesday, October 18.

"(British Prime Minister Tony) Blair keeps on saying that everything is getting better here. Perhaps he would care to come and see for himself," a British non-commissioned officer told the daily.