HEROES: War’s Youngest

Blond, bright-eyed Edward Collins, 12, lives in Rye, N.Y., spends his summers romping around his grandmother’s Cape Cod cottage. One morning he and Cousin Grant Howes set out to explore the bayberry thickets, to find a new short cut to the beach. Instead they found something that set their pulses racing: a hidden, camouflaged tent filled with radio equipment.

They ran to a Coast Guard base, panted out their story. Coastguardsmen followed them to the tent. This time it was guarded by a husky teen-aged German-talking youth, who charged at “Neddie” Collins with a bayonet, ran smack into a Coast Guard fist. As Neddie and his pal watched wide-eyed. Guardsmen hauled away spy and radio—a two-way, short-wave station complete with hidden aerial.

The Coast Guard kept mum about the spy’s origin. But it did concede that Neddie and Grant broke up a radio station which for months had sent messages to sea-roving Nazi submarines. In Rye, proud citizens are out to get Government heroes’ medals for the boys.