THE Powick parents of a soldier shot in Iraq are by his bedside as he recovers in a Birmingham hospital.

Colin and Edna Giles, of Prince Rupert Avenue, were notified in the early hours of Friday that their son, Lance Sergeant Robert Giles, had been shot.

L/Sgt Giles, 32, was on patrol in Basra with 2 Company of the Irish Guards when he was involved with a firefight with bank robbers on Thursday.

The robbers were killed by British troops, but not before one armed with a Daewoo K2 rifle managed to shoot L/Sgt Giles in the chest.

The high-powered nature of the rifle meant the bullet passed through his flak jacket and out of his back, lodging shards of the jacket in his lungs.

An army medical officer performed emergency surgery while still under fire, putting a plastic tube into L/Sgt Giles' lungs to prevent him drowning in his own blood.

He was thrown into a Warrior tank by his colleagues and treated at a field hospital in Kuwait.

On Tuesday he was flown back to Britain and is recovering at Heartlands Hospital, where his parents have been visiting him.

"He's a lot, lot better," said Mr Giles, who moved to Powick with his wife six years ago.

"He's got a bit of a bet on with the lads that he left behind that he'd get back to the base first!"

Mrs Giles paid tribute to the medical officer and soldiers who saved her son's life.

"We are so relieved, we can't thank them enough. Without them, he would be dead," she said.

L/Sgt Giles is the youngest of three children and has been in the army for 12 years. Although his regiment is based in Mnster, Germany, he regularly visits Powick on leave and often runs on the Malvern Hills.

Earlier in the war L/Sgt Giles had been hit in the eye by shrapnel and in another incident lost part of his hand to a nearby anti-tank missile explosion.

Before going to Iraq, he served in Kosovo and twice in Northern Ireland.