-Farm News photo by Lori Berglund
Paul Morgan proudly flies Old Glory outside Morgan Farms Firearms LLC near Ogden. A veteran of the U.S. Army Reserve and the Iowa National Guard, Morgan served in the military for 20 years, including two deployments to Iraq.

OGDEN — After 20 years and two deployments with the U.S. Army Reserve and Iowa National Guard, Paul Morgan decided it was time to narrow his focus. Morgan is a full-time farmer, a small business owner, volunteer firefighter, and — just to round things out — a husband and father.

Morgan is a very busy man, and he’s always liked it that way.

Just one year ago this August, Morgan decided it was time to put away his uniform and focus his busy life on the things he loves here at home. Morgan retired as a sergeant first class, working out of Joint Forces Headquarters in Johnston. It was a job he loved, but it was time to put a cap on his military career.

“I was 20 years old when I joined,” Morgan recalled. “I did three years with the Army Reserve and then I switched over to the Army National Guard and did 17 years with the guard.”

To say he didn’t know what he was getting into when he first joined up is an understatement.

“When I joined the reserves, I thought I was joining the National Guard, and they were wrong,” he said with a laugh.

His first assignment after basic training was in Waterloo, but that would not last long.

“The Army Reserves can pull from anywhere in the nation. I got pulled out of Omaha, and that’s where I deployed with my first deployment.”

It was the early years of the Iraq war when Morgan embarked on a 15-month tour of duty in 2004 and 2005.

“That was the wild west,” Morgan said. “When I got over there, I was with a transportation company. We drove freightliners from the border of Iraq and Kuwait all the way up to Mosul, which is in the northern part of Iraq.”

The route to Mosul was especially dangerous in those years.

“I found out I was a moving target, so I went over to the security forces and I did convoy security,” Morgan said. “I was a gunner on a Humvee for 13 of the 15 months.”

The years 2004 and 2005 were not easy ones in Iraq. The New York Times pegged U.S. losses of at least 844 in 2005 and 848 in 2004. The number of Americans wounded was estimated at 5,557 in 2005 and 7,989 in 2004.

“It was definitely crazy, that’s for sure,” Morgan said.

Morgan was single when on his first deployment. A 2000 graduate of Ogden High School, he studied agriculture for a time at Des Moines Area Community College and started farming with his parents, Dennis and Linda, in 2006. It was while serving at Fort McCoy, Wisconsin, that Morgan met a fellow soldier named Heather. She was from Algona and the couple married in 2010.

Heather is now in her 22nd year with the Guard. She serves full-time at Joint Forces Headquarters in Johnston, working in Human Resources. She has one deployment to her credit, serving stateside as part of a special operations unit from Kentucky.

“At that time, special operations didn’t take females overseas,” Morgan explained. “So she deployed stateside to the East Coast. She saw the aftermath,” which in itself takes a special person to serve.

Morgan noted that special operations now do include women in overseas deployments. At the time of his second deployment, both Morgan and his wife were initially called up to deploy. With two young daughters at home, the couple had some serious thinking to do.

“We talked about it for two or three weeks, and then I said, ‘I go, you stay,'” Morgan recalled. “I would rather go because I thought it would be better for our girls to have their mom at home.”

The second deployment, which came in 2018-2019, was shorter at nine months and had little comparison to those early, “wild west” years.

“It was nothing like the first deployment.” he recalled. “That was back when you just wondered when the next IED was going to hit.”

This second time around he served with an aviation unit in Kuwait and Iraq.

“I was in charge of transportation operations, everything that moved inside of Kuwait,” he explained.

The unit assisted special forces and Morgan was responsible for rewriting tactical operations for transportation. While losses had thankfully decreased, it was still a busy and critical time.

“We did over 3,000 missions in the nine months that we were deployed,” he recalled.

The landscape had changed dramatically since his first deployment.

“I drove up to my old camp and it wasn’t there,” Morgan said. “There was one little water tower and then all you would see for miles and miles was oil rigs. There was no sign of the military having been there.”

Back home, Heather and the girls waited. Today, the couple lives on his grandparents’ old farm, just down the road from where he grew up in rural Ogden. He has fond memories of spending time with his grandfather there, enjoying a pastime that fits well with his small business.

“I used to come over here and my grandfather had an old, single shot .22 rifle,” he recalled. “My grandfather taught me how to shoot. I got so I was more involved, taking them apart and learning how to put them back together.”

In 2012, he opened a gun shop as part of Morgan Farms Firearms LLC at Ogden. The business is located in what had been part of a garage. He went to school to become a gunsmith and started carrying a number of hard-to-find brands of firearms.

“I do gunsmithing and a lot of rebuilds,” Morgan explained. “It’s nice because I can offer a lot of different brands here.”

There is also a large social aspect of gun ownership. Morgan is at home talking about all kinds of weaponry and with people who share his interest in the sport.

“I really enjoy talking with the people who come in,” Morgan said. “I have a lot of regulars. You really get to know people.”

Twenty years since taking his oath and beginning his long career of service, Morgan clearly has no regrets. It was through this service that he met the woman who would become his wife. Together, they would serve their country and raise their family. A farmer and small business owner, he may be retired from the service, but he’s still serving his community, now as a volunteer firefighter in Ogden.

“It keeps me busy,” Morgan said of the farm and gun shop.

“I joined the reserves the winter after 9/11 happened,” Morgan reflected. “It was more or less for my family. My dad did 20 years in the National Guard during Vietnam. He did not have to deploy, but he served.”

And service runs in the family.