The wife of an RAF sergeant from Oxfordshire has spoken out about the stress and low pay of the military personnel being asked to provide cover for striking firefighters.

Denise Bradley, whose husband is based at RAF Benson, near Wallingford, said people should lobby MPs on pay and conditions for servicemen and women, who were forbidden to strike.

Many earned less than firefighters, she said.

About 500 firefighters in Oxfordshire are on strike in pursuit of a 40 per cent pay increase to take their wages from £21,500 to £30,000.

Army recruits in basic training earn £8,000 before moving to salaries of £12,000-£14,000. It takes four promotions to reach the £22,000 pay rate of a staff sergeant.

Mrs Bradley said her husband's storeroom team at the air base was overstretched, because staff had been sent to Halton, in Buckinghamshire, to provide fire cover.

Mrs Bradley, 45, who is a youth worker in Reading, said: "In 16 years of marriage, I've not seen my husband under this sort of stress before.

"His team in the storeroom has been reduced from about 10 to three. It means he has to bring paperwork home and we can't go out at weekends."

After 20 years' service all over the world, her husband earned £25,000 a year while she earned £21,000, she said, but they would still struggle to afford a one-bedroom flat in Reading.

Cheap rents of £160 per month for military housing were no substitute for having a foothold on the property ladder.

She added that corporals might earn only £20,000 and senior aircraftmen £15,000, despite new responsibilities such as chemical warfare training.

"Everyone knows about service people manning the Green Goddesses, but it's those left behind trying to do their normal jobs that are forgotten," she said.

Major Debbie Noble, a spokesman at the Army, Royal Navy and RAF fire control centre in Aldershot, which covers Oxfordshire and 19 other counties, agreed the fire strike had made pay an issue for services personnel.

She said: "They are reading a lot about the debate on pay and making comparisons.

"The wives are beginning to highlight the issue of pay and, if you ask people individually, it's a concern, but I think morale is very high."

Barry Stockford, chairman of the Fire Brigades Union's Oxfordshire branch: "The fact that other people are underpaid doesn't mean it's acceptable for us to have low pay. We would suggest they do something about it themselves."

A Ministry of Defence spokesman dismissed reports on the FBU's website that military personnel were receiving £1,000 bonuses during the strike as "completely wrong".