overnight. The next day, the fresh 4th Panzer Division was committed, retaking Samodurovka before beginning to advance on Teploye, which was held in strength by the 140th, backed by the 3rd Anti-Tank Brigade and the 79th Tank Brigade from the 19th Tank Corps. One battalion of the division was overrun and the German forces occupied part of the town before running into a "wall of fire" from dug-in tanks and anti-tank guns. The stand of the 140th at Teploye, along with that of the 307th Rifle Division at Ponyri, proved to be the high-water marks of 9th Army's advance. During the subsequent Red Army counteroffensive, the 70th Army took part in Operation Kutuzov and attacked Trosna to the south of the town of Kromy. On August 5, its units reached the region southwest of Kromy, and on the 17th they reached the German "Hagen" defense line near Domakha. Advance Later that month the division was moved to the 19th Rifle Corps of the 65th Army, and participated in the advance towards the Dnepr River over the following weeks. On September 16 it assisted in liberating the town of Novgorod-Severski and was given the name of that town as its divisional honorific: This was in addition to the title Siberian, which it had carried since its fourth formation. Battles for Belarus By October 1, 19th Corps had reached the Sozh River, on the right flank of 65th Army south of the Iput River, and one division of the Corps, the 354th, had already taken a small bridgehead over the Sozh. Lt. Gen. Pavel Batov, commander of 65th Army, planned an advance from this bridgehead by 19th Corps in the direction of Gomel, once it was reinforced by the 140th and the 37th Guards Rifle Divisions. The attack by the three divisions began on October 1, fanning out to capture the villages of Noyve and Starye Diatlovichi from the German 6th Infantry Division. By late on the next day the bridgehead had been expanded to a depth of 4 km in heavy fighting, but Batov's commitment of 19th Corps' final division, the 162nd, was not sufficient to counter the reserves brought in by German 2nd Army, and the advance stalled before the key town of Zherebnaia, guarding the southwestern approach to Gomel. This ended the first attempt on that city. From October 27 to November 9, Belorussian (the renamed Central) Front carried