The author used to teach a core course at Fordham University called "Language and Knowing." It was during an evening meeting of that class early in 1991 that he first heard that "Operation Desert Storm" had begun-by which he means that the United States and its allies started dropping bombs on Iraq and occupied Kuwait in preparation for a troop invasion of the area. The fighting part of the Gulf War began that night, and the author and his student spent most of that evening's class meeting talking about it. Many were adults of about the same age of the author at the time (thirty) or a bit younger, which made them old enough to recall the Vietnam War in vague terms, but without a full sense of having lived through the turmoil. They discussed how it felt to be at war, and what it meant. The students were agitated, but not unmoored--which was a fair description of how the author felt himself. In this article, the author discusses how he changed the syllabus that term and added war stories, along with George Orwell's essay "Politics and the English Language" to relate to what was going on in the world and open discussions for the class.