Translated from the Lakota. Bold text, in brackets, is marginalia added by the censor, and is translated from German.
Dear Little Deer,
[What is this? I don't even recognize this language.]
Hope you're doing well. I'm all right, but I did have something of a close call a few days back, and there's a nasty looking graze on my left leg as a souvenir. Lucky for me, the rotten Krauts can't aim too well— I don't think there's going to be anything but a scar and a story in a few weeks.
[It isn't English, or any other European language. And it's not in Cyrillic, so it isn't Russian, and I know what Greek looks like, and it isn't this.]
So I'm in the hospital recuperating, which seems to be a fancy word for 'staring at the wall and being bored silly.' I'm just sitting here, in this little room, all day, waiting for something to happen, and it never does. I guess you've got the same problem over where you are, so I shouldn't complain, but I really hate just lying here doing nothing.
[Is this code? What am I supposed to do with this?]
They're probably not going to send me home, though, not for a little scratch like this, but the funny thing is I don't mind. I think I'm almost glad. I mean, it's awful here, and it's kind of scary, but I'm still sort of glad I'm staying to finish the job. Even though I'd sure like to get back home, I'd really hate to leave my buddies in the unit to keep fighting without me. You know how it is.
[How am I supposed to know what to cut? Should I forward this to the cryptography boys?]
I heard from Mom a few weeks ago. Everyone's doing okay back home, she said. Grandad's been having some good luck with his snares, so they're not as hard up for meat as the townies are. And she and your mom are going to be running a big scrap metal drive with the other ladies from church. I think you'd better write to your mom and tell her to leave your motorcycle alone.
[To Hell with it. They don't pay me enough for this. Pass it through.]
I guess that's all. Take care,
Rabbit
*.*.*.*.*.*
Carter bit his lip. He didn't like the idea of his cousin in the hospital. And his leg, of all places! Rabbit had been as fast a runner as his namesake; Carter hoped that he still would be, once he'd healed up a little.
At least he was alive, and in one piece. That was the important thing, after all. And Rabbit wasn't in some terrible stalag somewhere, a real one, with mean goons and no tunnels or Colonel Hogans. He was hurt, yes, but it wasn't too bad. He was safe.
Sort of safe, anyway.
With a shiver, Carter wondered how much of Rabbit's letter was the same kind of soothing lies he, himself, wrote to his family so that they would think that he was at least sort of safe, too.
*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*
Author's note: We see Carter receiving at least one letter written in Lakota. I can't be certain, but from the two seconds it was onscreen, the paper didn't seem to have any holes in it. Perhaps the censors just threw up their hands.
There do seem to have been some Lakota code talkers, but I don't think Rabbit was one of them. If he was, he probably wouldn't have been sending personal letters, in that language, into a German prison camp where they could study it at their leisure. His CO would have had a few things to say about that, I would imagine, and if Rabbit hadn't been on the injured reserve list before that conversation, he probably would have been afterwards.
