GARY Thompson remains the oldest British serviceman to die in either Iraq or Afghanistan.

He decided to rejoin the RAF as a reservist when he was 48, after having left in the late 1970s.

Jacqui said: "We were fully supportive, he was just so happy."

But it was when they learned he was to serve in Afghanistan that the reality hit. "That one shocked me," she said.

"Up until that point, I had visions of them leafing through his papers, realising he was 50 and saying 'you're too old'.

"But really 50 is just a number. It sounds quite old, but it was not relative to how he acted. I'm not sure how many 50-year-olds go to Afghanistan, but I always thought of him as two 25-year-olds rolled in to one."

"When he went I did not worry about him. I'm not sure if that was some subconscious mechanism of coping.

"I missed him, but it wasn't worry.

"He used to send letters and I would be like a teenager, rushing to the door every day to see if anything had arrived and feeling disappointed if I hadn't got a letter."