Back to the future

Just inside an 8-foot-high wire fence running along a dusty blacktop road, Tom Freitag swings the dinner-plate-sized end of a metal detector. He walks in a straight line, his black T-shirt and brown cargo pants blending with the sandy, sparsely covered pasture beside him. Freitag is sweeping left and right, staring at an LCD screen, when the machine emits a telltale high-pitched whine. He pauses, ignoring the rumble of trucks on the road and the approach of curious cows mooing in the ­pasture. Freitag sweeps the spot again. When the whine rings out a second time, he pulls a small survey flag from a bag around his waist and sticks it into the ground.

Nearby, about 10 men and women go through a similar routine, using blue flags when their metal detectors find lead, and yellow flags for iron. They also dig with T-handled spades and small garden trowels in grids the size of side-by-side tennis courts. Like Freitag, they all sport American flags on the right sleeves of their T-shirts, a symbol they once wore on their military uniforms.

Under the shadows of century-old live oaks and the occasional Mexican eagle circling slowly overhead, these veterans-turned-­aspiring-archaeologists are searching for lead musket balls, iron ­cannon shot, muskets, and swords—anything that will help identify the site of the largest and bloodiest battle in Texas history—the 1813 Battle of Medina. After leaving the military, they’re also working to plant a flag in their futures.

A nonprofit called American Veterans Archaeological Recovery (AVAR) is running this dig, and Stephen Humphreys is the organization’s CEO. His boyish face and ­tattoos— Bible verses in Greek—seem to contrast with his credentials, which include graduate degrees in theology, archaeology, and Biblical studies. The six-year Air Force veteran founded AVAR in 2016 after participating in British-led projects while earning his doctorate in England.

Humphreys wanted to help disabled veterans. He says “rehabilitation archaeology”—adapting fieldwork to create long-term personal and professional growth—increases veterans’ senses of purpose and value. And while they work, they talk, That helps them cope with anxiety, depression, and ­feelings of isolation. Research, such as a 2018 report in Psychological Services, suggests peer discussions help veterans better reintegrate into society.

National Guard veteran Kyle O’Connor drove his Toyota Corolla all the way from Minnesota to this pasture, which is 25 miles south of San Antonio, to join the crew looking for the Battle of Medina site. During that historic four-hour fight, Spanish royalists routed a hodgepodge Republican Army of Tejanos, Americans, French, and Native Americans fighting for independence.

More than 200 years later, in 1968, a road-grading crew found a human skeleton south of San Antonio. Historians were excited when they ­discovered seven copper buttons from the early 1800s—along with a 1-inch lead ball lodged in the skeleton’s neck. Historians think the man met his end after being struck by a cannon shot during the Battle of Medina. Now, about 10 miles away, Humphreys’ crew spends hours scraping and sifting ­hardscrabble sand under the relentless Texas sun, hoping to find related artifacts.

O’Connor pulls blue and yellow surveyor flags out of the ground placed there just minutes ago and lays them nearby. Using a serrated trowel, he removes a coffee-can-sized clump of sand and dirt and sets it aside. He ­lowers the wand of a small, carrot-sized metal detector into the small pit he’s dug and waves it back and forth, stopping when he hears it chirp. Metal fragments as small as a fingernail go into plastic bags to be cataloged and analyzed.

O’Connor, a 41-year-old husband and father of four, has wanted to be an archaeologist for as long as he can remember. He even earned a bachelor’s degree in anthropology in 2006 in hopes of running archaeological digs across the globe. Instead, he joined the Minnesota Army National Guard, got married, and raised a family.

But a 45-minute Zoom presentation resurrected his dream in 2020. It featured an archaeologist discussing digs in Israel, Europe, and the United States—all manned by military veterans.

“I was thinking, I can’t believe this is happening because I’ve been searching for something like this ever since I got out of the military—even beforehand,” O’Connor recalled.

He filled out the online application for American Veterans Archaeological Recovery—which included questions about any military-connected medical conditions—and hit “send” even before the Zoom call ended.

Humphreys says the mix of mental and physical tasks involved with archaeology mirrors the sense of discovery and adventure that attracted people like O’Connor to the military—but without focusing on who they used to be.

“It’s holistic,” Humphreys says. “You’re around other vets who have similar struggles, and you’re getting to be part of a bigger-picture mission again, which a lot of vets miss.”

This late-October dig in South Central Texas is the 18th project Humphreys has organized for veterans. Early on, he followed the British model in which vets joined an ongoing project and completed tasks with minimal training. But he noticed their sense of accomplishment, camaraderie, and connection with other veterans seemed to end when the tools were put away and everyone went home. Also, a few of the 220 veterans who have participated in the program told Humphreys he was playing into the “broken veteran” stereotype, rather than ­providing opportunities for actual long-term growth.

“It started to feel to me a little bit like that ‘Tom Sawyer’ kind of story where you were saying, ‘Yeah, come and whitewash my fence. You’ll love it. This is so great,’” Humphreys said. “The veterans were literally doing the grunt work for archaeologists, but they weren’t getting the training.”

So in 2019, Humphreys, a former aircraft maintenance officer, jettisoned the “one-and-done” history of archaeology-therapy programs and turned AVAR into a vocational program. Participants receive thousands of dollars’ worth of experience and increasing levels of responsibility with each project. Last year, Humphreys was able to pay an hourly wage consistent with entry-level archaeology careers.

“The goal here really is not to bring them in and say, ‘OK, you’re busted. This will make you feel a little better for a couple of weeks, then you can go off and go home,’” he said. “Our goal is to make them good at this and send them home saying, ‘Wow, that was really cool. And now I can do something different with my life that I didn’t think I could ever do.’”

Kyle O’Connor is on his fourth project. He deployed to Iraq in 2005 for more than a year during some of the deadliest days of the war and retired from the National Guard in 2016. Working beside veterans again has helped him adjust mentally after leaving the close-knit community he thrived in for nearly 15 years. He is also a crew-support specialist for the organization and gets paid as a consultant. He works with the other participants, listening, offering advice, and adjusting his leadership approach depending on personalities.

Standing next to a laptop perched atop the bed of a white pickup truck, Humphreys points to a screen full of yellow and blue dots representing metal-detector hits. He says one of the dots represents a .50-caliber ball with small pieces missing, consistent with hitting something—or someone. The veterans are adding more information daily in the quest to find the battlefield, but they haven’t found enough evidence to stake a flag and declare victory.

“We’re looking for those tiny, tiny munitions in large quantities,” Humphreys said. “When you find enough of those, then you can start making an argument that this was a battlefield.”

O’Connor’s determined face cracks into a smile when he talks about his team’s accomplishments. He says every piece they find, even tins used for ­modern-era target practice, advances research. He’s equally proud that his children, in their early teens and 20s, are seeing him get closer to achieving his dream of becoming a full-time cultural resource manager. Recalling his many days away from family while in the military, he hopes to find full-time archaeology work closer to home. He also plans to continue mentoring other veterans.

O’Connor still has hard days, but he credits his archaeology work with helping him along his healing process: “I come here and get to hang out with veterans the entire time. It’s a Godsend; I don’t think I’ll ever give this up.”