Alex Rodriguez greets war hero Megan Leavey and her bomb-sniffing dog, Rex

Alex Rodriguez greets war hero Megan Leavey and her bomb-sniffing dog, Rex.

Megan Leavey is back with Rex after their time searching for bombs in Iraq, a job immortalized by Daily News cartoonist Bill Gallo.

Her name is Megan Leavey and she is 28 years old and before she joined the Marines and went to Iraq and almost didn’t come back, she loved to play ball. She was a middle infielder and leadoff hitter who was one of the top prep softball players in Rockland County.

About 12:30 Sunday afternoon, Megan Leavey will be back on the ballfield, the most famous of them all. The occasion will be big and loud. Megan Leavey doesn’t usually feel comfortable around big and loud, and you might not either if you’d been hit by a roadside bomb and tossed in the air as if you were a kewpie doll.

But Cpl. Megan Leavey knows it will be okay for her at Yankee Stadium, because Rex will be there. How many times has Rex saved her? How unfailing is his love and loyalty? Leavey will be wearing her Marine dress blues with a replica of her Purple Heart. Rex, an 11-year-old German Shepherd, will wear a fatigue-green collar and a red, white and blue dog tag. Megan Leavey and Rex are together again and that is exactly what the Yankees and a lot of others are celebrating — a story about life and death and service and steadfastness, and even the heart of Bill Gallo, the iconic Daily News cartoonist who died a year ago last Friday.

“I don’t think I would’ve gotten through half the things I’ve been through without Rex,” Leavey said. “He has literally saved my life, and gotten me through a lot of hard times, emotionally, too.”

Megan Leavey graduated from Nyack HS 11 years ago, tried college briefly and enlisted in the Marines in 2003. Her parents, Bill and Ellyn Leavey, were not thrilled. Bill Leavey tried to talk their only child out of it. Megan told him, “Dad, I have to put myself in a situation where I can’t quit and get to see what I’m made of. That’s the only way I’m going to grow up.”

Said Bill Leavey, “What possibly could I say to that?”

Megan went to Paris Island for basic training, signed up for the military police and was accepted into the K-9 unit, where she was paired with Rex, who had been trained both to sniff out bombs and attack. They were deployed to Iraq, in Fallujah, for seven months in 2005, and deployed again to Ramadi in May, 2006. Bill Leavey, a Bronx-born Teamster in the theatrical business and longtime Daily News reader, wrote a letter to Bill Gallo about his daughter the Marine, sending along a photo of Megan and Rex.

Gallo was so touched he drew a cartoon of them and sent the original to the Leaveys in the Rockland town of Valley Cottage, where it now hangs in the Leavey living room.

Rex’s training taught him to lie down whenever he sniffed any of the ingredients of an explosive. Megan and Rex went on hundreds of missions, tethered to each other with a cord. Each time Rex lay down, Leavey would call the bomb squad. On Sept. 4, 2006, Leavey and Rex set out from the base, ahead of five Humvees, clearing an area that had been unoccupied. Rex found four bombs along the road in short order. Four hours into the mission, Leavey, armed with an M16 rifle and a 9-mm pistol, approached an intersection. Leavey and Rex kept walking, but before Rex could sniff anything out, the enemy set off a bomb via a remote blasting box, Leavey and Rex taking a direct hit, getting thrown 10 feet and winding up in a roadside ditch, still tethered, somehow alive.

A Marines explosives expert told Leavey, “You are lucky. They buried it too deep. The ground took the majority of the shrapnel and blast that was meant for you.”

Leavey was airlifted to a hospital in Baghdad. She had suffered a traumatic brain injury and hearing loss from an exploded eardrum. Rex suffered a shoulder injury and his own hearing loss. They flew back to Camp Pendleton. Leavey was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and began treatment. She received her Purple Heart in a plastic case and put it by her bedside in her Camp Pendleton, Calif. barracks. She went out one day and came back to find the Purple Heart stolen.

She never got it back.

“I can’t believe somebody would do that,” Bill Leavey said.

With under a year left in her hitch, Megan Leavey submitted paperwork to adopt Rex as her own pet. Her commanding officer said it wasn’t possible yet, as Rex was still working, not ready to be retired. At the end of her tour in 2007, Megan packed up her belongings and went to see Rex in the kennel. She wished she could convey all she felt to him. She started to cry.

“I hope I see you again,” Megan told Rex.

She returned home and resumed civilian life. It hasn’t been easy. Leavey has bouts with anxiety and depression, common side-effects of PTSD. She stayed in touch with Rex’s handlers, even went to see him once, but didn’t have much hope of adopting him until Christmas time last year, when she found out that Rex had developed a facial palsy. It meant he would be taken out of service, and might be hers to adopt. It was just a matter of pushing through the paperwork, getting the Marines’ attention, which proved to be another challenge.

Leavey called Jerry Donnellan, who helps out with Veteran causes in Rockland. Donnellan reached out to the staff of Sen. Charles Schumer. Schumer issued a press release in support of Leavey and Rex’s reunion, and soon the story was all over the media, and before Leavey knew it, she was good friends with Mindy Levine, an ardent dog-lover and wife of Randy Levine, president of the Yankees. The Levines had seen one of the stories. The Yankees wanted to help. Some six weeks ago, Leavey got a call from an officer at Camp Pendleton.

“Your adoption of Rex has been approved,” he told her.

Leavey started to cry, happy tears this time. Soon she was on a Delta flight the Yankees arranged, flying first-class with Mindy Levine. They picked up Rex, and Rex was in first class, too, on the return trip.

Leavey has so much gratitude she doesn’t know where to begin: for Jerry Donnellan and Chuck Schumer, and for Randy and Mindy Levine, who paid for the whole trip and put her up in California. Now the Yankees will honor Megan and Rex today, on May 13. Thirteen is the number Leavey used to wear in softball, the number of Alex Rodriguez, her favorite player, and Dan Marino, her favorite quarterback.

Sunday morning Megan Leavey and Rex will leave behind two cats and two other dogs, Rocky, and Patriot, a Chocolate-lab who is also trained to detect explosives, and head down the Thruway to the Stadium. The Yankees will present Cpl. Megan Leavey with a signed jersey and a special surprise. Other things are planned, but the Yankees want them to remain a secret. All Megan Leavey knows is that she will be in a big, loud place Sunday afternoon and she figures it will all feel safe and sweet, because she’ll be at home plate alongside Rex, who saved her life and so much more.

“Just to be able to care for him and to give him the best last years of his life I can, it means everything,” Megan Leavey said.

WAYNE COFFEY

NY DAILY NEWS

Saturday, May 12, 2012