The French trenches gradually crept up the slopes of the hill until the German commander, the Bavarian Crown Prince, realized that the next assault was likely to be irresistible and to involve the abandonment of Lille, Lens, Douai, and the entire front at this point. A mine explosion west of Hill 140 made a crater fifty yards across. A steeplechase dash across the open from both sides--French and Germans met in the crater--a fierce struggle for its possession followed, and the French won the hole. A furious bombardment from a score of quick-firing mortars hidden behind La Folie Hill battered the earth out of shape, and when the Germans occupied the terrain where the French trenches had been, the "seventy-fives" played such havoc among them that they were forced to relinquish their hold. To the south of Frise the Germans were preparing an attack, but were prevented from carrying it out by French and British barrier fires. On the British front the artillery was hardly less active than in Artois. On one section, according to a German report, the British fired 1,700 shrapnel shells, 700 high explosive shells, and about the same number of bombs within twenty-four hours. On January 27, 1916, the Germans attempted an infantry attack on a salient northeast of Loos, but were held back. A British night attack on the German trenches near Messines, Flanders, was likewise repulsed. In the morning of February 12, 1916, the Germans broke into the British trenches near Pilkellen, but were pushed out by bombing parties. There was much mining activity about Hulluch and north of the Ypres-Comines Canal. At the latter place some desperate underground fighting occurred between sappers. On the 14th the Germans were again engaged in serious operations in the La Bassee region, where they exploded seven mines on the British front.