Algren locates the city's heart in the "nobodies nobody knows," the ginsoaks, stew bums, and shell-shocked veterans who lurk in the alleys and linger in the weedy wastes underneath the 'L' tracks.

"Marriage of the Blessed" tells the story of a shell-shocked veteran of the Iran-Iraq war who resents the comfortable lives of those not at the front.

A man described as a shell-shocked veteran of World War I tried to force his way into a reception at the Executive Mansion in Albany, and Mr. McCreery, according to news accounts at the time, saw the man reach into his pocket as if to draw a weapon.

One letter informs a shell-shocked veteran that he is dying of cancer, causing the distraught man to commit suicide.

Then there are the good ones, including Anna (Michelle Williams), a sensitive young woman so numbed by her brother's return from World War II as a shell-shocked veteran that she takes up with the jealous, abusive Billy.

Guinness was uninterested in his mother, who later had a short marriage to a violent, shell-shocked veteran of the Irish War of Independence.

We staggered out into Dorothy's backyard like shell-shocked veterans.

Now, sitting at a table with a young couple and an older family who looked as shell-shocked as any war veterans, Jo drank down the rest of her orange juice and looked out the window beside her.

Buddy returned a shell-shocked veteran.

Toward the end of World War II, John Huston made a documentary about shell-shocked veterans, "Let There Be Light."