Spoils of War

Sergeant Donald Morrison is hardly the classic soldier of fortune. Drafted by the U.S. Army at 19 from his rural Georgia home, he served a year in Viet Nam in the infantry. He came home just about as poor as when he left. If Morrison has his way, though, the state of his finances may radically change.

Morrison was out on patrol in Binh Dinh province on July 31, 1968, when his flashlight happened to pick out a piece of metal in a niche on a cave wall. The glint was a U.S. ammunition box, and in it, tied in vines, were three stacks of $50 bills--a handsome total of $150,000. (Officials have speculated that Communists siphoned the money out of the Saigon black market, and were hoarding it for the purchase of supplies.)

"I offered to split with everybody in the squad," Morrison recalls, "but the lieutenant said no. He said it wasn't mine." The lieutenant turned the money in to headquarters, and Morrison never saw it again.

Daydreams. Discharged from the Army a month later, Morrison brooded about his lost treasure. Finally he filed suit in the U.S. district court in Valdosta, Ga., claiming the money as war booty. The judge rejected the suit on the grounds that he had no jurisdiction. Morrison then went to Washington to press his case before the U.S. Court of Claims. His lawyer argued that the $150,000 was a "treasure trove" and therefore belonged to the finder. The Army responded that Morrison, while in uniform, was acting as a Government agent, and that any loot he discovered consequently belonged to the U.S. Government.

The court may take months to settle the claim. While he waits, Morrison, now 24, will be back in Argyle, Ga., earning $125 a week from the state highway department and daydreaming about the lost riches that may someday be his.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.