The soldiers' mission was to destroy that bridge.

Literal

Soldiers [possessive-の] mission [topic-は] that bridge [object-を] destroy [nominalizer-こと] was.

Uses the topic-comment pattern with ~ことだった: the mission (使命) is the topic, and the comment is 'was to destroy the bridge.' ~こと nominalizes the verb phrase, turning it into a noun that can serve as the predicate complement.