IN SLAV LANGUAGE

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 205, 30 August 1941, Page 8

IN SLAV LANGUAGE

SOLDIER'S MESSAGE

MISSING NEW ZEALANDER

(P.A.) CHRISTCHURCH, this day

A postcard from Poland bearing a printed message in a language which they could not identify gave to Mr. and Mrs. E. E. Upston this week the first news of their son, Gunner P. Upston, of Selwyn, since they were informed that he was reported missing after fighting in Greece.

The language is believed to be Ukrainian, and a translation made by a Polish resident of Cbristchurch reveals that Gunner Upston was apparently in a distribution camp for prisoners of war when he signed the card, and was unwounded and in good health.

His parents were naturally puzzled when they received the postcard, and it was forwarded through the postmaster at Dunsandel to Professor L. G. Pocock, Professor of Classics at Canterbury University College for translation of the message, in the belief that the language was Greek, as Gunner Upston was last seen on the beach during the evacuation from Greece. The language was not Greek. Bulgarian, Czech, or Russian, and definitely not Polish, although the postcard came from Poland.

Professor Pocock passed the postcard on to a Polish resident whose wife is a Czech, and he found that the message was printed in the Slav alphabet. With his wife's assistance, and using a Russian dictionary he was able to make a translation of the postcard, which was posted on June 14 and arrived at Selwyn on August 26. It had been stamped three times by the German military authorities, and also by a censor.