San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Battlefield dig yields common ground
LOSOYA — The pea-size metal fragment Koleen Starkey unearthed from this pasture south of San Antonio holds secrets.
Under the fall sun, one might see a pebble or rusty bearing, but Starkey and her teammates from American Veterans Archaeological Recovery, or AVAR, see a clue that could help answer a 209-yearold mystery: the location of the lost Battle of Medina.
On Aug. 18, 1813, among the oaks and sand south of the Medina River, 1,400 Texas republican fighters clashed with 1,800 Spanish royalists. The royalists decimated the republicans — only 100 survived.
Perhaps Starkey’s find is a piece of a musket ball that swiped a man’s limb or life on that hot day. Maybe it ricocheted off a rock or tree amid the smoke and screams. Maybe it’s a different relic from a different time.
Finding answers about the battle is only one part of the journey for the 10 veterans on this archaeological expedition dubbed “Finding Medina 2” that’s also meant to help them find peace, purpose and camaraderie.
On this day, several cows watched as the vets clad in black T-shirts worked their metal detectors and shovels in a field dotted with blue, orange and yellow flags. Except for the beeps of metal detectors, quiet conversations, distant vehicles and some occasional “moos,” the field was serene.
The years have hidden the battle’s carnage, and there’s something poetic in modern veterans finding peace here.
This was Starkey’s second trip with AVAR. In April, the 52-year-old Iowa native traveled with the group to Sicily to recover a crashed American P-38 fighter aircraft from
World War II.
The work, she said, has given her a new mission, and she enjoys the camaraderie.
“I like that I’m hanging with other veterans,” said the 16year Army veteran, who worked as a military police officer and deployed to Iraq. “You always feel like maybe people don’t understand what you’re talking about or your sense of humor, that these guys do — you can kind of say whatever you want.”
Nearby, Kyle O’Connor, a 41-year-old from Minnesota, swung a metal detector. He served in the Army and completed a tour in Iraq. He and Starkey served at the same base in Iraq, Camp Ashraf, around the same time — a coincidence they discovered on an expedition.
O’Connor spoke of how easily vets find common ground on the digs.
“We can relate to each other almost instantaneously, so you can gain those connections and
gain those bonds fairly quickly,” he said. “So I think that’s the best thing for me.”
The military veteran community is smaller than it seems, and such coincidences sometimes happen to me while
reporting. During this trip, I crossed paths with Todd Vician, a former Air Force colleague who now writes for a magazine. We hadn’t seen each other for several years and are both out of the military. We can call each other by our first names now.
Michael Von Ness, 61, of San Antonio learned about the current dig for the battlefield from Express-News coverage of AVAR’s Finding Medina 1, which occurred in February. He said his wife urged him to check out the program.
“It’s been fantastic. Everybody works really well,” the ’80s-era Army vet said. “It’s very educational. It’s rewarding mentally, physically. … It sounds funny, but it just kind of takes you back to, like, your Army days.”
Stephen Humphreys, an Air Force vet and AVAR’s chief executive, is optimistic about the three-week dig.
He uses a GPS-based grid system to mark each find. With enough artifacts, he hopes to piece together more specifics about the battle using spatial trend analysis.
The February dig uncovered some munitions that Texas State University analyzed with X-ray fluorescence, or XRF. Three of the pieces matched grapeshot from the Blue Wing Road Burial— a skeleton from the Battle of Medina era.
Humphreys becomes more optimistic with each find, but he’s not ready to declare victory.
“It’s too early to say, ‘yeah, we got it,’ ” he said. “We continue to come up with really exciting, compelling evidence. … I think we’re in a good spot, which is why we’re still here.”
He expects the search to continue sometime next year.