In 1941, FDR spoke of “four freedoms.” The fourth of them was “freedom from fear” — a somewhat curious notion. I like the phrase, however, and have particularly applied it to crime. Washington and other cities are now beset by crime. Citizens are deprived of freedom from fear. I lead my Impromptus today with this issue.

Last Thursday, I said this: “In my column, I keep noting the deaths of World War II figures. They seem to be about a hundred” — years old, that is. A reader writes,

Hello, Jay,

… I thought you might like to hear about my mother. She turned 105 this past Monday (the 22nd). She didn’t do anything particularly heroic in World War II but she did enlist in the SPARs, the Coast Guard Women’s Reserve, in April 1943 and served until December 1945. Her ending rank was Storekeeper First Class.

By the way, “SPAR” stands for “Semper Paratus—Always Ready.”

Our reader continues,

She was born during the Spanish-flu epidemic. She survived the COVID epidemic. And in August 2022, at the age of 104, she danced at her granddaughter’s wedding. She’s a remarkable woman.

A real treat to know about her.

In that Thursday column, I noted the passing of Russell Hamler, the last of Merrill’s Marauders. He died at 99. Merrill’s Marauders, named for U.S. Army general Frank Merrill, were a special-operations unit, fighting in the jungles of Southeast Asia. A great many did not survive.

A reader writes,

Dear Jay:

As usual, I was interested, amused, delighted, and moved by various bits of your column today …

But I was most moved by your mention of the passing of the last of Merrill’s Marauders. Not just because of their astounding story, but because my uncle was the second-to-the-last of them to die, about a year and a half ago.

Our reader wrote something about his uncle to an interested party the day after his uncle died. He said,

I thought I would pass along some information about my uncle Gabriel Kinney, who passed away yesterday less than two months shy of his 102nd birthday. …

Uncle Gabriel once told my brother that he volunteered [for Merrill’s Marauders] because he didn’t want to be in combat again with a regular infantry unit, composed of men with varying degrees of training and motivation. He thought his chances of survival would be improved in a more “elite” unit.

But the losses to the unit were devastating.

It has only been within the last 15 to 20 years that Uncle Gabriel would begin to talk openly about his war experiences. The only thing I ever heard from him, once long ago when my brother and I were unwisely and discourteously not taking his hints that he didn’t want to talk, was: “You want to know what it was like? I’ll tell you what it was like. When our buddies were too wounded to keep up with us, we had to shoot them to make sure the Japs didn’t get them alive!” …

Fortunately, Uncle Gabriel lived a long and happy life after the war, had many children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and in recent years has been publicly honored as a representative of all his buddies who didn’t return from the jungle.

In his note to me, our reader adds what he calls “one postscript.” He says,

I saw my Aunt Elena a few months ago, shortly before she passed. She said that Uncle Gabe woke up screaming from a “jungle dream” almost every night, and the night before he died he was yelling that there were Japanese soldiers in the bedroom. I am thankful that he is now with God and at peace, with all his wounds forever healed.