looking like it would be a costly failure. In an effort to salvage something from the ruins, Army General G. K. Zhukov issued revised orders to attempt to encircle and destroy at least part of the German forces. 39th Army had had some success in the Molodoi Tud area in the early going. The new plan was to renew the attack from this area, with supporting, or diversionary, attacks by 30th Army's 359th and 380th Rifle Divisions. The attack went in on 3 December, after a brief but violent artillery preparation. The German forward defenses were penetrated, and more artillery was brought into the bridgehead on the south bank of the Volga. But by evening, the division's attack on the 251st Infantry Division's right flank was contained. Advance On 13 August 1943, Colonel Guryashin handed his command to Col. Pyotr Pavlovich Kosolapov, who would remain in this post for the duration of the war. By September, as Western Front advanced towards Smolensk, the division was in the 36th Rifle Corps of 31st Army. On 19 September it was awarded a divisional honorific: Following the liberation of Smolensk, Western Front continued its offensive towards Orsha. The first attempt to take this city began on the morning of 3 October. Lt. Gen. V. A. Gluzdovsky, commander of 31st Army, deployed the 36th Corps north of the Smolensk-Orsha road, with the 359th and 215th Rifle Divisions in the first echelon, facing the defenses of the German 197th Infantry Division. Over the next three days, the reinforced Corps, in tandem with the attack of 5th Army to the north, unhinged the German defenses north of the highway and drove them westwards through the village of Ermaki. Further Soviet pressure over the following days forced the 197th Infantry to withdraw on 9 October to a new positions astride the highway from Krasnoe to Gerasimenki. These could not be held, and a further retreat took place on the 11th, when the German forces took up yet another defensive line, from Shcheki on the Verkhita River, southward across the highway at Redki, to the Dniepr at Novaia. At this point General Gluzdovsky was ordered to halt briefly and prepare for a new assault on 12 October. The second Orsha offensive began with an 85-minute artillery preparation, which was largely ineffective due to a timely withdrawal by the defenders to their second trench line. In heavy fighting over