SIOUX CITY, IOWA (KCAU) – The military can take you to parts of the world you’ve never been to, and this is true for this U.S. Army Veteran.

“I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I had friends that went into the military, so I was like huh, I’ll give it a shot,” U.S. Army Veteran Ryan Moritz said.

In 1992, Ryan Moritz joined the U.S. Army as a fueler.

“All of my people that I was with were getting sent to stateside units and they were getting deployed right away to Iraq. And they called my name out and I was going to Korea. Camp Casey, Korea. I’m like, I don’t even know where that’s at,” Moritz said.

A new adventure in a new country would begin with a harsh realization.

“The information that was passed along was that North Korea has about 1.1 million troops. They have nine times the equipment. So your life expectancy, if North Korea decides to attack South Korea was about nine minutes is what they were telling us,” Moritz explained.

A tense deployment in Korea ended a year later, landing Moritz back in the States where he would receive intense training at air assault school.

“You jump out of helicopters. You repel out of them or you fast rope out of them. And you also repel off of towers. I’ve jumped out of a helicopter. A couple of times,” Moritz said.

Moritz spent two and a half years in Fort Campbell and was then deployed to Haiti and Bosnia.

“We were the most deployed unit in the army at the time for what I was told. They were deployed once a year for the last seven years,” Moritz said.

After his deployment to Bosnia, Moritz left the military for a year and a half before joining the 960th Army Reserve Center in Sioux City

“I moved up to Sioux City, went to school at WIT. Made my way through the ranks there and retired as a first sergeant,” Moritz said.

During his time in Sioux City, Moritz would get deployment orders to Iraq.

“We were in transportation. We had a mission up in Northern Iraq and we would stay, and every day we would take fuel and equipment supplies from our place to Tal Afar,” Moritz said.

One month into his time in Iraq, Moritz received a major wakeup call.

“So you have a 12,000 pound vehicle going 50 miles an hour and the headlights in front of a Humvee aren’t that bright and I see this cord going across the street. Then we ran right over the top of it, Didn’t catch, rolled over the top of it. Called up EOD and about three hours later, they come out and it was five 155-millimeter tank rounds buried in the street right below where we went over. So we would’ve been dead that day,” Moritz explained.

Thankfully Moritz wouldn’t lose any men during his time in Iraq, which ended up being his final deployment.

“I actually got out after I got back home again for a short duration. I got back in as a retention, did that for about seven years,” Moritz said.

Moritz continues his work in Sioux City serving his community through the police department, where he was recently promoted to Sergeant.