FORT SILL, Okla. -- Sgt. 1st Class Ted Bentley loves playing his guitar and considers it a great way to relieve the stresses of life.
"Music is a good release, especially once you know how to play," Bentley said. "It gets your mind focused on what you are doing and off of what's wrong with you. It gets you thinking outside the box and gets you away from all of your problems."
Bentley's been playing the guitar more than 46 years and he's got plenty of things that he wants to get off of his mind. He's had numerous surgeries on his knees but he doesn't take medicine for the pain. As a wounded warrior in Fort Sill's Warrior Transition Unit, Bentley is on the downhill side of an Army career that has spanned nearly 30 years.
"I've been in the Army 16 years active duty and 15 years in the National Guard with the 45th Infantry. I was a truck driver, light wheel mechanic and heavy equipment operator and a supervisor in all three categories with the 120th Engineer Battalion, 95th Troop Command from 1989 until 2005. That's where I started to have problems with my knees," he said.
After another deployment to Iraq, Bentley came back to Fort Sill and was assigned to the Mobilization and Deployment Brigade.
"That's when they determined that my knees were messed up. I had hurt them on the deployment. They sent me over here to the WTU, and I've been here since April of 2010," he said.
That's when he discovered that his life-long passion for music could be a gift that he could give to other wounded Soldiers.
"We started to get all of these wounded Soldiers in here; some of them found out I played and wanted to start jamming. Capt. Mike Carroll, the WTU commander, said, 'OK, for your work therapy, you'll do music therapy with the Soldiers' which was fine with me," he said. "The Lord blessed me with a talent and it's something I enjoy doing. When I got here in 2010 there were some guys who wanted to learn how to play. So I told them I would give anyone in the WTU free guitar lessons."
Bentley strongly believes that music can change a person's life. He recalled one particular Soldier who was having a difficult time adjusting to being wounded and not able to return to active duty.
"He took a lot of his anger out on the guitar, playing really rough and with a lot of intensity. But after I talked to him and showed him some chords, he changed. He was getting really frustrated because he wanted to sing songs but they didn't sound the way he wanted them to," he said.
So Bentley showed him what he was doing wrong and began teaching him different techniques.
"I showed him how to do bar chords, which are more advanced. At first he said, 'You've got to be kidding! There is no way I can learn how to play those.' But he practiced every night and within a week he was playing those chords. He told me that was the best therapy in the world," Bentley added.
"You can do so much with music. People will come when you have a guitar. You just sit down and start playing a guitar and it draws people. It doesn't matter what kind of music you're playing. They'll ask you 'Hey can you play this or that?' And I like to share what I have with other people," he said. Bentley plays mostly gospel music and has recently started making CDs of his music. He just considers it an extension of his faith as a Christian, and part of the music therapy for the Soldiers.
"I was a retention officer for 45th Infantry for a while and I know a lot of the men. Some of them who knew I'm a Christian came to me and asked if we could have a Bible study. And I talked to the commander and he said make it happen. So we're getting that started also."
Even as a Soldier in the WTU, Bentley takes his responsibilities as a senior NCO seriously, to ensure the the Soldiers, as he says 'toe the line,' because they still have the same normal training and mandatory classes as regular troops.
"When you're here, there are rules you have to follow. You have to make your medical appointments, because they are for you," Bentley emphasized. "You're here to get healed. To get healed you have to make those appointments. And you're not always going to like everything that goes down, but you have to Soldier-up. A lot of guys think 'I'm WTU, I'm special.' Well, you are special, but you're still a Soldier, and you still have to conduct yourself as a Soldier."
Bentley knows that a lot of his fellow Soldiers from the 45th Infantry are coming back soon and a lot of them are really hurting. "But they just sucked it up because they didn't want to leave their buddies. And they've been saying 'It's not that bad, I'll tough it out.' That's great for esprit de corps, but for their health, it's bad," Bentley said. "Because now with them putting it off for a year or however long it's been since they were hurt, it's that much more damage that's been done. But you can't blame them because that's what a Soldier has to do."
"Our motto for the WTU is: 'Rise again. Fight again.' That means rising out of the ashes, because you have been hurt, and now you have to work to rise up," he said. Bentley believes that through his music he can help his fellow Soldiers find a better life.
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