Maine man shares soccer with Iraqis Greenville native gives youths equipment

loading...

Alan Johnston has seen the two sides of Iraq firsthand.

As a private security contractor who has been in the Middle East for more than a year, the Greenville native has seen friends die and witnessed bodies on the side of the road, and he’s recuperating from getting too close to a car bomb himself. Yet many days, while escorting his charges around Iraq, the soccer referee has watched children play games with whatever they could find – rocks, metal cans, pieces of pipe.

Although his job is to guard other people, there’s little Johnston can do about unexpected ambushes and car bombs. But children playing soccer with rocks and debris – now that he could do something about.

Johnston, a 44-year-old Windsor resident, has refereed soccer in central Maine for more than 10 years. With the help of Soccer Maine, a private group that governs youth soccer in the state, he recently outfitted a small band of Iraqi children with new soccer balls, T-shirts and shorts.

In a series of e-mails to the NEWS, Johnston explained why it was important for him to try to make a difference in the lives of children who are growing up in such turmoil. Children everywhere can boost their confidence and learn teamwork from sports, Johnston wrote from his current location in the northwestern corner of Iraq near the Turkish and Syrian borders.

But for the children of Iraq and other war-torn nations, sports takes on a different meaning.

“Soccer here … is also a way for the kids to try and forget the horror they are living in,” he wrote.

It’s also a life of horror for Iraqi adults and foreigners working in the country. The prospect of death by bomb or ambush is something that weighs on Johnston, whose wife of 22 years and two grown children are still in the United States.

“Yes, I am scared every day, 24 hours a day,” he wrote. “In this business, if you are not scared it is time to leave before you get someone killed.”

So why go?

Contractors make excellent money; Johnston said private security operators can be paid from $8,000 to $18,000 per month with a variety of benefits, time off and sometimes free airfare.

But for Johnston, who was working as an environmental engineer at Wausau-Mosinee Papers in Livermore Falls and as an emergency medical technician for Delta Ambulance before he left Maine, it’s about more than the pay. Private contractors are a big part of the effort to rebuild Iraq.

“No, nothing is worth the money, but when you talk to a lot of Iraqis … and the freedom they have … it helps the cause,” Johnston wrote.

Johnston feels his work makes a difference. He arrived in Iraq last fall as a private security operator responsible for a group of 150 Westerners – bankers, accountants and program analysts who worked with different government ministries in Baghdad in an attempt to get operations up and running again.

For two months, Johnston supervised 60 bodyguards and 25 Iraqi drivers who provided security for the Westerners during their daily travels and at night at the Al Hyatt hotel in Baghdad.

Then Johnston switched to running long-range missions from Baghdad to places such as Jordan, Kuwait and Turkey. He ferried Westerners who wanted to get into Iraq but were unable to fly there because there was no plane service at that point.

On Jan. 1, Johnston was transferred to Fallujah and Ramadi, west of Baghdad, to provide security to 500 Turkish workers who were building a power line from Haditha to Baghdad, a distance of about 200 miles. Five months later, Johnston was back in Baghdad after his team came under gunfire while escorting three civilians from the Army Corps of Engineers from Ramadi to Haditha. The last vehicle in the group was overrun and one of Johnston’s friends was killed. The group faced more gunfire as it tried to recover the body.

In July, after his hotel had been hit by rockets and he drove through more roadside attacks, Johnston took a job with TetraTech, an engineering firm that is building medical clinics at an Iraqi training base in Al Kisik, north of Mosul.

No matter where Johnston went in his travels around the region, he saw children playing soccer with whatever was available, in whatever open space they could find. Children were still trying to play games.

“They would play soccer in an open area of dirt and use rocks for goals or [use] pieces of pipe sticking up from the ground,” Johnston wrote. “The kids played in their bare feet and would kick anything they could find that would roll.”

The children struck a chord with Johnston. He played high school soccer in Greenville from 1974 to 1978 and is a high school, college and youth referee and referee assessor for the United States Soccer Federation. His own children played soccer at Erskine Academy in South China.

“I thought it would be rewarding to do a little something [in Iraq],” he wrote.

Johnston contacted Carol Woodcock, the executive director of Soccer Maine, which in turn made contact with GetSomeBalls, a company based in Langhorne, Pa., which supplies soccer balls to schools, tournaments and clubs all over the country.

The T-shirts, shorts and soccer balls slowly started to arrive in Baghdad last spring. Shipments of the equipment to Johnston were erratic because he wasn’t in the same place for long.

With everything finally in hand, Johnston doled out the equipment on Sept. 27. Under heavy guard, Johnston went to a dump where he had observed many of the local children scavenging for anything usable and distributed his treasure trove of 48 sets of shorts and T-shirts and 22 soccer balls.

“The kids were ecstatic and they came running from all over,” he said. “It seemed like [they] were crawling out from under rocks. … We had a hard time to control them and get them into a line so I could give [the equipment] out.”

Back home in Maine, Johnston’s wife, Cheryl, who watched their daughter Nicole, now 18, and son Craig, now 23, play soccer for years, said last week she could understand why it was important for her husband to make sure the Iraqi children had new soccer equipment. She can’t understand what life is like for her husband and the Iraqi people, but the former soccer mom can imagine how grateful the children and their parents must have been.

“I’m so proud of Alan,” said Cheryl Johnston, who is a lab technician for MaineGeneral Health in Augusta and Waterville. “If I was a mother [in Iraq], I would be thankful to have someone do this for my children. It gives the kids something to look forward to.”

Still, soccer and sports can take one’s mind off things only for a while. Alan Johnston couldn’t even stay to watch the children play with the equipment – it’s just too dangerous for him to be out in the open for very long.

Cheryl, Nicole and Craig Johnston are aware of the dangers and they’ve worked out their own way of dealing with the worry they have for Alan. They stay away from the news and hear from him often.

Alan, who has his own satellite computer hook-up for 24-hour access, e-mails Cheryl every day to let her know what he’s up to. Phone service is very limited, although he calls at least once a week.

“I generally do not listen to the news,” Cheryl Johnston said. “I don’t think I’d be able to function on a daily basis if I watched every bit of news that came over the television. We’re so inundated with all the negative things.

“Alan e-mails me every day, lets me know what he’s doing every day. He doesn’t talk a lot about what’s going on over there. I think he doesn’t want to worry me. I always have this knot in the pit of my stomach, but I try not to dwell on it and get on with my daily activities and get on with my day as best as I can. For our children, too, it’s always in the back of our minds when they hear an American has been kidnapped. They’re always worried that it’s their dad. Alan’s really very good about e-mailing us every day so we know he’s OK.”

The family will have to keep up with Johnston by e-mail and phone until mid-January, when he is expected to return to Maine. He hopes to referee soccer this spring, although the injuries he suffered from a car bomb may put those plans on hold. Johnston did not describe the extent of his injuries but wrote he is having some difficulty walking.

Meanwhile, Johnston feels he’s doing good work where he is right now.

“The Iraqis are very grateful for the coalition forces that are here for ousting Saddam’s regime, but they still have a long road to fight,” Johnston wrote. “They have never been afforded the opportunity to make business decisions and their technology is 50 to 60 years behind us.”