5th Parachute Brigade, and suffered from the same problems. All of its constituent units were scattered throughout the area due to poor navigation, heavy cloud cover, and several of the drop-zones either not being marked correctly or marked correctly but incorrectly positioned due to pathfinder error. The 8th Parachute Battalion, tasked with destroying two bridges near Bures and a third by Troarn, was widely scattered with a number of its paratroopers landing in the operational area of 5th Parachute Brigade. When the commanding officer, Alastair Pearson, arrived at the battalion rendezvous point at 01:20, he found only thirty paratroopers and a small group of sappers with a Jeep and trailer. By 03:30, this number had increased to just over 140 paratroopers yet there were still no sign of the sappers who would be required to demolish the bridges. Pearson therefore decided to send a small force to demolish the bridges at Bures, and lead the rest of the battalion to a crossroad north of Troarn where it would await more reinforcements before it attacked. The force sent to Bures discovered that the two bridges had already been demolished by a group of sappers, who had reached the bridges a few hours earlier, and so rejoined the battalion near Troarn that had now increased in numbers after another fifty men had arrived. A reconnaissance party, and a party of sappers, was sent into Troarn to ascertain the status of the bridge. These troops came under fire, from a German-occupied house near the bridge. After a brief fire-fight, the paratroopers captured a number of Germans from the 21st Panzer Division. The airborne troops then made their way to the bridge, which they discovered had been partially demolished already. Once the sappers had widened the length of the bridge demolished, using their explosives, the reconnaissance force withdrew back to the rest of the battalion at the crossroad. Having achieved its objective, the battalion then moved north and took up positions near Le Mesnail to widen the airborne bridgehead formed by the division. The 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion was allotted, as its primary task, the demolition of two bridges: one at Varaville and another at Robehomme. Much like the rest of the units in the division, the battalion was scattered throughout the operational area. One group of paratroopers landed away from their drop-zone, and another landed only a short distance from the invasion beaches.