Where would they have gone with their pot of gold?

Me too. I have no idea what they would have done.

probably sell it in the swiss market for money. after that money, they can get new identity papers and such and get back to the US. maybe kelly and crapgame have some political connections that can "hook them up".

I suspect that with Crapgame's contacts they may have found a way to smuggle the gold back home. Then all they had to do was rejoin the war and hope they survived it so they could be rich when they made it back.

The only other option would to go to Switzerland, but that would have meant the entire platoon being marked down as deserters and never being able go back home.

I recall that earlier in the film, when Crapgame (Don Rickles) first heard about the gold heist plan from Pvt. Kelly, he phoned an acquaintance named Izzy and asked what the price of gold was on the Paris market. From that exchange, I always inferred that the plan was to take the gold back to Paris, fence it via Izzy or some other shady connection that Crapgame had, get a $h!t-load of money, and simply stay in France (or Europe) after the war and live like kings. None of them seemed like they had families or any other meaningful ties waiting for them back in the States, so I had always assumed they would just stay in France or other parts of Europe and just melt into the background somehow.

They could never hide that much money from the army, The only thing they could do was get across the Swiss border with the gold and never go back to America.

I've often wondered that as well. Switzerland would be my bet.

There are some things to remember about them being classed as deserters. First of all, their commander or whoever says near the start of the movie that he was off "for the weekend" and won't necessarily miss them immediately.

Secondly, they've just restarted the war after it was bogged down, opening a new front of attack, penetrating far into German lines. They're more likely to get medals than blasted for deserting.

So my guess is, dump the gold fast in a Swiss bank, run back to the farmhouse where they were resting while the commander left them at the start of the movie, and hope to survive the war.

As an aside, in the James Bond short story "Octopussy" a man does the same thing with a few gold bars. He buries them high on a mountain and goes back for them when he's on leave.

They never would have made it.

Switzerland would be the only sensible option really. I sure wouldn't go back to the Army after getting all that gold. I'd cross the Swiss border somewhere quiet and not at an official crossing point.

With their officer not knowing where they were anyway, he'd assume they were back in the front line. With them disappearing they could quite possibly be classed as KIA it MIA.

They shouldn't get into too much trouble returning to the States after a decade or so under their own names as the passage of time would diminish the crime of being AWOL.