Marine and her K-9 survive Iraq bomb blast

A Marine from Valley Cottage recently survived the blast of an improvised explosive device, a mortar attack and small-arms fire in the course of one day in Iraq.

Cpl. Megan Leavey, 22, a 2001 Nyack High School graduate, works with a 5-year-old explosives-detecting German shepherd named Rex. They are based at Camp Pendleton, Calif., and now are deployed at Camp Blue Diamond in Ramadi on their second tour in Iraq.

Leavey and Rex were working ahead of an Army scout unit, scouring the road as soldiers on foot and in Humvees followed. Rex found the pressure plate of an improvised explosive device, so Leavey marked it and they went around. She and the dog then approached a car to inspect it.

"The IED went off under us," she wrote in an e-mail from Iraq. "It was buried deep in the road and sent us flying.

"I just remember feeling it go through my whole body and thinking I was about to die, then I couldn't hear anything because it was so loud, and all I could see when I opened my eyes was smoke around us."

She crawled into a ditch and checked on Rex.

Read the rest at the Journal News