 The officers of the division were mostly graduates from the Vilnius infantry academy, who had been evacuated after the invasion to Novokuznetsk, Kemerovo Oblast.Formation and training of the division came to an end by February 1943 and the division entered the war on 21 February 1943 at Alekseyevka, 50 km southeast of Oryol.This brought the division into the path of the Wehrmacht's Operation Citadel or Battle of Kursk, where it served with the 42nd Rifle Corps of the 48th Army, Soviet Central Front.