A DISTRAUGHT mother today spoke of her disgust after the soldier who attacked her son with a pickaxe was jailed for four-and-half years.

And as she tried to come to terms with the traumatic effect the case has had on her family, Kathleen Bisping said: "Is that all for ruining my son's life?"

She spoke out after Judge Peregrine Simon told 18-year-old Private Grant Kenyon he committed a "savage and wholly disproportionate attack" which left Lance Corporal Konrad Bisping with devastating injuries.

Konrad, whose family live in Clitheroe, was changed from a lively, confident person who enjoyed sports and made friends easily to a man who prefers to spend his time alone and feels threatened and frightened by strangers.

Kenyon, from Mill Hill, Blackburn, was cleared of attempted murder after a trial at Bristol Crown Court earlier this month but pleaded guilty to grievous bodily harm with intent.

The teenager was told the savage pickaxe attack on a fellow soldier during a three-day exercise in January on Salisbury Plain, had ruined the life of a promising soldier.

Judge Simon told Kenyon he would have faced a prison stretch in excess of six years if he had been an adult at the time of the attack.

"Your victim's family will be justified in thinking your sentence, no matter how long, will never be enough," he said.

Robert Davies, prosecuting, said 27-year-old Lance Corporal Bisping was suffering deep psychological trauma, vision loss and panic attacks. Reading a statement from the injured soldier's wife Claire, he said: "It upsets me to see this confident man reduced in this way.

"His life has been devastated and so has mine. He will never fully get over it." Mrs Bisping, 26, said her husband's vision was down to five per cent and he relied on a white stick to move around.

As well as suffering mental delusions, he locked doors every time he was left alone.

During the trial, Kenyon said he lashed out with the pickaxe after a row at the end of a gruelling three-day exercise but had no intention to kill. The pickaxe lodged one-and-a-half inches into Lance Corporal Bisping's brain. Paramedics airlifted the soldier to hospital with the weapon still lodged in his skull.

Neil Ford, defending, said Kenyon, who served with the Catterick-based First Battalion Queens Lancashire Regiment, was full of remorse.

"There is nothing in the nature of this young man to persuade your lordship he is a danger to the public."

Kenyon has been moved from a Young Offenders Institution to HMP Horfield in Bristol.

Kathleen said she was glad the whole process was over and hoped that its conclusion may bring an improvement in Konrad's condition.

She said: "That's all I can hope at the moment."