Students of Moorhead High School to Make International History

Students at Moorhead High School hammer out a small place in history for themselves.

By learning an old trait that played a big part in The Great War.
 
“In Flanders fields the poppies blow.”

It’s the first line of a famous poem honoring soldiers who died during World War I.

Now, thanks in part to students at Moorhead High School, poppies will soon be home again in Flanders Fields.
 
Blacksmith Ralph Mehnert-Meland says it’s a simple formula. “A bunch of high school kids with hammers, a forge and metal. It’s going really well. They just love it.”
 
Welding class has turned into blacksmithing class at Moorhead High School.
 
Excited Moorhed Sophomore Ian Manning explains, “You get to heat the metal up really hot, and it’s glowing, and you can feel the heat when you’re pounding on it, and the anvil just rings and it’s really cool.”
 
These kids are making flowers, but they’re not quite as delicate as the ones you buy at the grocery store or flower shop.

Junior Michael Vasek says, “When you just wail on it and it expands like that, it’s a lot of fun.”
 
These petals are serving a greater purpose.
 
Mehnert-Meland explains, “We’re gonna have a big monument put up in one of the big World War I battlefields in Ypres, Belgium, actually where the famous Flanders Fields are.”
 
An international blacksmithing group is collecting forged poppies from around the world for the memorial, commemorating the 100th anniversary of some of the bloodiest battles of World War I.
 
“We cut them out,” Mehnert-Meland explains, “and then the kids actually go and hammer these blanks into these kinds of poppies.”
 
This is the first time these kids have ever blacksmithed anything, and the product they’re creating is going to a memorial people around the world will see.
 
Vasek adds, “I don’t take what we’re doing lightly after hearing the story that blacksmiths had a huge part in World War I.”
 
Blacksmiths were vital to the war effort.

Most equipment was transported by horse, and blacksmiths were tasked with making horse shoes.
 
“Kind of the guys behind the curtain who made everything possible,” says Vasek.
 
Now, a century later, these kids are honoring that past by carrying this tradition to the future.
 
“It’s definitely something I would do again,” says Vasek.

The poppies will be shipped out in about three weeks.

The monument will open at the Flanders Fields Museum in Belgium this September.