Following the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914, Morgan's battery departed for the Western Front in October 1914 as part of the 3rd (Lahore) Division. Morgan suffered a near-miss from a German 5.9-inch gun which blew him into the air and buried him in a shell hole, and he was evacuated to hospital in Boulogne with shell shock. He was granted a short sick leave in England only to be present when news reached his family that his brother had been killed in action. On returning to the front, Morgan became aide-de-camp (ADC) to Brigadier General Edward Spencer Hoare-Nairne, the commander of the Lahore Divisional Artillery. The artillery remained on the Western Front when the bulk of the division departed for the Mesopotamian campaign. As it took longer to train artillery than infantry, the Lahore divisional artillery acted in turn as the artillery of the 2nd Canadian Division, 3rd Canadian Division, 4th Australian Division and finally the 4th Canadian Division until their own artillery was sufficiently trained to take over.