Ted, 100: Music saved my life in Nazi prison camp
Starving internees played for rations
STARVING in a Nazi prison camp, plucky Edward White saved himself and other desperate internees by setting up a band and playing for food.
With only basic skills before his capture by the Germans, Ted emerged from his internment four years later such a talented musician that he went on to write for Vera Lynn and the BBC.
He only quit aged 97, three years ago – and, celebrating his 100th birthday yesterday, he looked back at the extraordinary career launched in the direst of circumstances with a band called The Swingternees.
Son David, 67, said: “They were starving in the camp and he wrote to the Red Cross and got them to send instruments.
“They sent trumpets and trombones, then they managed to source a drum kit and a double bass. But he was a saxophone player and didn’t know how to play the trumpet or the trombone, so he taught himself.
“He then taught his fellow inmates and they were sent out to play for German citizens in nearby towns. They were paid in extra rations for people in the camps.
“They were starving, that was his way of helping people in the camp.”
Grandad Ted from Truro, Cornwall, recalled: “The camp was very monotonous so I spent a lot of time writing music.
“The Red Cross sent us paper
and writing materials and people were interested in learning to play.”
Ted had gone to Jersey after the outbreak of the Second World War, and had music lessons there from the leader of the island’s Symphony Orchestra. When the Germans invaded the Channel Island in 1940, he was arrested and sent to the Laufen camp in Bavaria.
There he hatched his plan, and soon he and the rest of The Swingternees were playing for their lives.
And the skills honed through necessity would later shape his working life. After the camp was liberated Ted launched a successful music career in the BBC TV orchestrations department, working on shows including Fawlty Towers, Steptoe and Son, and The Good Life, as well as with wartime favourite Vera Lynn.
Ted said: “I’ve always enjoyed music, it’s been my life and I became a freelance musician in London. I met Vera Lynn at the BBC, she was recording a TV show.
“Her husband had been a sax player like me, he asked me to arrange the music for the tour of Australia.”
Ted had two children with wife Mary, who died aged 82, and has three adult grandchildren.
David said: “I think it’s true to say his time in the prisoner of war camp honed his skills, and his later success was in some way a result of his imprisonment.”