CRIPPLED by rheumatoid arthritis, Sylvia, Jimmy Hendy's widow, has tried to put a few pounds aside for the headstone the veteran of Burma and Malaya so richly deserves.

"But it's slow progress, and I'm already 75 and not able to leave the house unless I get our daughter, Sharon, to help me," Slyvia says, with no trace of complaint.

"It's not for me, it's for Jimmy. A headstone costs about 800 but I'm determined that he should have one."

Jimmy Hendy, born in Newport in 1927 was called up in 1945, demobbed, and within a year was back in khaki as one of the post-war'Z' Reservists.

"I first met Jimmy when I was 14. He was ever such a smart lad," Sylvia recalls, with a wistful smile.

"Right at the end of the war he was called up and sent out to Burma with the South Wales Borderers.

"He was out there for something over a year and was only home for another year before he was called up again for the Malaya emergency, this time with the Welch Regiment."

Slowly, Sylvia unfolds an Argus cutting from 1948 in which Jimmy perkily reacts to getting his second lot of call-up papers within the space of three years.

"I'm happy to go," he told a reporter.

Subsequent photographs show Jimmy dressed in working tropical uniform, serving as a regimental policeman.

Mr Bill Palmer, a social worker for the Soldiers', Sailors', Airmen and Families Association hopes someone will help Sylvia find the money for her late husband's headstone.

"Jimmy was one of the millions of men who did their national service from the end of the war until the last draft in 1960, who nobody really thought would have to face much hardship.

"After all, they were coming back to a country of which it was said'we never had it so good'.

"But a lot of men came home to no great incomes and couldn't afford much in the way of insurance policies. Had he have served a few months earlier there might have been a headstone for Sergeant Hendy but he didn't qualify under the rules."

After Jimmy was finally demobilsed he and Sylvia were married at St John's, Maindee and lived in Malpas before moving to Monnow Way, Bettws in 1965, where Sylvia still lives. Jimmy died in 2002 and is buried at Christchurch cemetery in Newport.