Thanks to an endless stream of news documentaries from the era, as well as movies like Apocalypse Now, we have a pretty good idea today of what our soldiers listened to back in the sixties to help them get through the Vietnam War.

Hendrix, or maybe The Doors anyone?

But while we have it ingrained into our collective subconscious that artists like that — along with the protest songs of people like Dylan, John Lennon, and the Buffalo Springfield — provided the soundtrack to that unpopular war, few of us have any idea how our boys escape through music in today's Iraq. Body Of War: Songs That Inspired An Iraq War Veteran, is a double disc set that provides just such a peek into the iPod of one Iraq veteran, Tomas Young.

Young's story is also the subject of a new documentary film — also called Body Of War. In the film, produced by Phil Donahue and Ellen Spiro, we learn how Tomas signed up to defend his country in Afghanistan days after the 9/11 attacks, only to be shipped instead to Iraq.

Five days into his tour of duty there, Tomas was shot through the collarbone while on a mission in an uncovered, unarmored truck. There, he suffered a severed spinal cord which left him paralyzed from the chest down. The film chronicles the aftermath of this, as Tomas deals first with the depression, pain, and debilataing effects of the injury, and then eventually discovers new purpose as a voice against the war.

As something of an unofficial soundtrack to the film, Body Of War: Songs That Inspired An Iraq War Veteran is described by Tomas himself as a collection of the music that got him through the experience — from the combat he saw, to the physical and psychological aftermath. Every song that appears here was selected by Young himself.