BERLIN — U.S. Rep. Jim Marshall, D-Macon, was in Iraq over Easter weekend, the same time a Moultrie soldier, Sgt. Steve McCoy, was critically injured in a roadside bomb.

Marshall spoke with Berlin residents this week at city hall, and Iraq was one of the topics discussed.

“I hate it of course that this happened, and anything I can do, my office can do, we will do. We’ve been dramatically increasing funding to the Veterans Administration anticipating that there’s going to be a lot of young Americans and families that are going to need a great deal of help because of horrible wounds received in Iraq,” he told The Moultrie Observer later. “We’ve got not only a legal duty but a moral responsibility to stand by them.”

Marshall knows the horror of war firsthand. While fighting in the Vietnam War, Marshall held one of his close friends as he died from severe wounds, he said.

“It’s the nature of war, and I hope that we could put it behind us as a world, but we’re not there yet. As long as there’s going to be violence around the globe, there’s going to be young men and women — God bless them — stepping up to defend freedom. And that means some will die and some will be horribly injured. All of us who benefit from their sacrifice need to stand by them and their families.”

McCoy and his wife, Tabitha, have 3-year-old twins.

Community collections are going on. DeMott Tractor Co. and Heritage Church are serving as collection points. Tabitha Moore’s parents, Steve and Becky Moore, are members of Joyful Life Church of God. An address will be published soon where funds will go directly to the family.

On Saturday, Marshall led a congressional delegation north of Baghdad in Diyala Province to meet with representatives of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr on neutral ground. Marshall had intended to meet with Sadr in Sadr City.

“Sadr wouldn’t meet with us, and the military did not want us to go into Sadr City — too dangerous,” he said.

Marshall and the delegation met with five Sadr representatives at Rashid Hotel. One was a lieutenant with the militia wing, Jayesh al-Mahdi.

“The other four were kind of limited in what they might say — not free to speak — not in a situation where they can speak freely. And we only found that out, because we got a note passed to us from one of the other four saying he would be saying different things if this guy wasn’t at the table,” Marshall said.

From there, the delegation went straight to meet with Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi, a Sunni leader, “probably the most prominent individual Sunni.”

“The idea was to see how reconciliation was going at the leadership level between Sunni and Shia, and to encourage them to move it along since time is not on our side here. Americans are not going to simply sit patiently while our kids get killed and horribly wounded, and the leadership just dithers is how I put it,” Marshall said.

The congressman said he almost walked out on al-Hashemi, which would have been an international incident.

“He spent quite a bit of time, saying that there was no point talking to the Shia leadership about reconciliation, because they do not proceed in good faith. A death penalty had been handed down to Chemical Ali and two other Sunni leaders who were very close to Saddam, part of Saddam’s inner circle. And it was his (al-Hashemi’s) belief that although ‘Chemical Ali’ deserved it that the other two did not and that their sentences should have been commuted,” he said.