Company (Airborne); and men of the Glider Pilot Regiment. The object of this action was to prevent German armour from crossing the bridges and attacking the eastern flank of the landings at Sword Beach. Five of the Ox and Bucks's gliders landed as close as 47 yards from their objectives from 16 minutes past midnight. The attackers poured out of their battered gliders, completely surprising the German defenders, and took the bridges within 10 minutes. They lost two men in the process, Lieutenant Den Brotheridge and Lance corporal Fred Greenhalgh. Greenhalgh drowned in a nearby pond when his glider landed. Lieutenant Brotheridge was mortally wounded crossing the bridge in the first minutes of the assault and became the first member of the invading Allied armies to die as a result of enemy fire on D-Day. One glider, assigned to the capture of the Orne river bridge, landed at the bridge over the River Dives, some 7 miles off. Most of the soldiers in this glider moved through German lines towards the village of Ranville where they eventually re-joined the British forces. The Ox and Bucks were reinforced at 03.00hrs by Lieutenant Colonel Pine-Coffin's 7th Parachute Battalion, and linked up with the beach landing forces with the arrival of Lord Lovat's Commandos. Among the first of the 7th Battalion reinforcements was Lieutenant Richard Todd, a young actor, who, nearly two decades later, would play Major Howard in the film The Longest Day. Commemorations In 1984, as part of the 40th anniversary commemorations, the Royal Yacht Britannia sailed past the bridge on route to Caen. The ship passed in the early hours, escorted by two tugs and HMS Torquay. Today The original Pegasus Bridge now resides in the grounds of the Pegasus Museum. The museum was inaugurated by the Prince of Wales on 4 June 2000, Brigadier James Hill, Françoise Gondrée foundress with General Sir Richard Nelson Gale as Président, and lies at the Eastern end of the current bridge. The original bridge was replaced in 1994 by the wider, stronger structure, built by Spie Batignolles. It had been extended by 5 metres in the early 1960s to accommodate the widening of the canal and remained in use until 1993. After its replacement, Pegasus Bridge was left on waste ground. The bridge was sold to the museum for the symbolic price of one Franc. Many of the soldiers killed in the actions