On the 70th anniversary of World War II, the 88-year-old soldier, who also saw action in the 1971 war with Pakistan -- relives his memories of the war that remains the bloodiest conflict in history in a conversation with rediff.com's Archana Masih.

I was commissioned in 1943. After the initial grounding of four months in my regiment, I was earmarked to go to Burma. But before that I had to undergo three months of jungle training in Chhindwara in the Central Provinces, now Madhya Pradesh.

After those three months, we got the shock of our lives when we were told we had to proceed to Italy to join the First Battalion that had suffered very heavy casualties. Four of us were shipped to Italy.

Travel to Italy

We left Bombay by ship in March 1944. We went to Port Suez and took a train from there to Cairo to await our ship to Italy. We had to wait there for a month because there was no ship. We boarded a Polish cruise liner that had been converted into a troop ship. There were Indian soldiers going to the war aboard the ship.

We got off at Taranto at the heel of Italy and were sent to a transit camp. I was asked to be the assistant adjutant of the transit camp till I moved up to join my unit.

General (T B) Henderson Brooks, the famous general, was the second in command of that battalion. The British did not give him a promotion and command of the battalion because he was an Anglo Indian.

I met him at the transit camp and I will never forget the meeting. He told me: 'So you are D'Souza who will be going to join the First Battalion.' I said, 'Sir, I am fed up of waiting.' He said, 'My dear boy, you don't know what war is.'

Eventually I got my orders and took a convoy of Indian troops from Taranto to Rome by train. From there we went by road to our various destinations.

The Impossible Bridge

I joined the battalion immediately after the third battle of Cassino in which my battalion took a very prominent part. The earlier two attacks on Monte Cassino had failed, so they decided to hand it over to the British 15th Army and selected the 8th Indian Division that was known as the River Crossing Division.

There were two divisions of the Polish army, a French brigade, Canadian tanks, British artillery to take Cassino. The 8th Indian Division was asked to form the bridgehead across the very fast flowing Gari river.

We sent two of our sepoys from Ratnagiri to swim across the river to check where we could launch the bridge. They came back with the information and our Indian engineers launched the bridge which was called the 'Impossible Bridge' because it was under direct observation of Monte Cassino.

Having got the bridge across, we made the bridgehead after which the Poles and the Free French went through, followed by the Canadian tanks. When the actual assault on Casino was launched by the Poles, we were told to go to a place called Piere Monte to prevent any German counter attack.

I joined the battalion immediately after that at the foot of Peruguia, a famous town in central Italy. From there we were asked to advance, I was allotted as a company officer to C Company commanded by a British tea planter from Assam, Jimmy Winter.

Here, I got a frantic message that the military transport officer of the battalion had been injured and I had to take over immediately from him. From there we were asked to advance along the hill on the main road from Rome to Florence. We fought against the retreating Germans up to the south bank of the Arno river which runs through Florence.