Sampson received permission from his bishop, the Most Reverend Gerald T. Bergan, of Des Moines, Iowa to enter the United States Army as a chaplain. It was at Harvard University, strangely enough, that he really began his odyssey; for it was at Harvard that new Army chaplains received their initial entry training into the Army chaplaincy during World War II. After finishing the course, Sampson volunteered for an airborne assignment. It was also a decision, he wrote later, that was made out of ignorance. "Like a zealous young business man, starting to in a strange town," he admitted, "I was ready to join anything out of a sheer sense of civic duty."
