stage of his career he received the Order of Lenin and held the rank of lieutenant general. The first assignment was the Army's attack as part of Operation Uranus, the encirclement operation against Paulus’s 6th Army at Stalingrad. By 23 November this was complete, Lelyushenko advancing 55 km to the west. During this period he was officially reprimanded for his habitual absence from his rear area command post, due to his insistence on attending the front in person. The following offensive codenamed Operation Little Saturn commenced on 16 December 1942 and Lelyushenko's Army, now designated 3rd Guards Army, again drove forward with 1st Guards Mechanised Corps making 100 km of ground into the enemy rear areas. 1943 and 1944 – Soviet victories The following 2 years were successful for forces under Lelyushenko's command. Despite not being directly involved at Kursk they were part of the strategic offensives that followed in order to exploit the failure of the German effort. Given command of the 4th Tank Army in March 1944, his troops and tanks seized strategically valuable Kamenets-Podolsky on 26 March and trapped – for a while at least – the 1st Panzer Army. The Soviet offensive Operation Bagration in the summer of 1944 saw Lelyushenko command the 4th Tank Army in cooperation with 3rd Guards Tank Army as the 1st Ukrainian Front (Front being the Soviet term for the largest operational grouping of forces and consisting usually of multiple armies with support units) drove forward against German Army Group Northern Ukraine. 27 July, two weeks into the offensive, these forces took Lvov and Lelyushenko's Army subsequently covered 200 km into the Vistula bridgehead by mid-August. However casualties were very high and the Army had to reequip after over 90% AFV casualties in killed or wounded. Not until the following year would they again advance. Final stages of the war With Soviet forces in the ascendancy, 4th Tank Army attacked in the Keltse area on 11 January 1945 as part of its Front's offensive. Driving through German defensive lines they encountered a strong armoured reserve, 24 Panzer Corps, near Maleshov. Lelyushenko managed the armoured battle that followed, in which up to 1000 tanks were committed, defeating the German counter-attack and destroying much of the reserve involved, before ordering his forces across the Oder river. This action resulted in him winning his second Hero of the Soviet Union Award. During the last