as "missing in action, presumed killed in action". The attempt to reform was abandoned and the division was officially disbanded on August 19. 4th Formation The fourth formation of the division began on November 1, 1942, using personnel from the NKVD, at Novosibirsk in the Siberian Military District. Its first commander, Maj. Gen. Mikhail Yenshin, was appointed the same day. It consisted of: 96th "Chita" Rifle Regiment 258th "Khabarovsk" Rifle Regiment 283rd "Krasnofouminsk" Rifle Regiment 371st "Sibirsk" Artillery Regiment 92nd Antitank Battalion 87th Sapper Battalion, and other supporting units. The NKVD began forming the division, and three others, to serve as NKVD rifle divisions prior to being authorized by the Commissar of Defense on December 7. The division was passed to Red Army control as the 140th in February 1943. At that time it had 8,685 officers and men assigned, 69 percent of whom were under 30 years of age, quite a youthful cadre for a late-war division. They were also noted as being 50 percent Russian nationality, 15 percent Ukrainian, and the remaining 35 percent mixed non-Slavic. Officially these men were drawn from internal troops and border guards of the NKVD. As the Siberian Military District had no external borders, it's likely that some were taken from guards of the GULAG and other sources that were off-limits to the Red Army. On March 19, General Yenshin handed the command over to Col. Zinovii Samoilovich Shekhtman, who would, in turn, hand command to Maj. Gen. Aleksandr Yakovlevich Kiselyov on May 11. As with the other NKVD divisions, the 140th was assigned to the 70th Army in the Central Front. During the Battle of Kursk the 70th Army fought on the left flank of the 2nd Tank Army and played a role in stopping the German 9th Army that was trying to break through to Kursk from the north. On July 7, the third day of the battle, elements of the division were holding the village of Samodurovka. From there they were conducting long-range anti-tank fire against the flank of a battlegroup from 2nd Panzer Division advancing on the key objective of Olkhovatka. The battlegroup commander, Col. Arnold Burmeister, diverted some of his armor, including Tigers, towards this threat, and drove the Soviet forces from the village, destroying a supporting company of T-34s in the process. Lacking infantry, Burmeister chose to leave Samodurovka vacant, and it was reoccupied by Soviet troops