Talk to nearly anyone, and they’ll say they’re surprised Osama bin Laden was killed.

Wayne Madson, veteran services officer in Austin, received a call at 10 p.m. Sunday telling him to turn on his TV. He, like many others, didn’t know what all the commotion was about. He said he remembers Sept. 11 like it was yesterday, so the news came as somewhat of a relief.

“My initial reaction was thank goodness they got him and hopefully things start straightening out without him instigating things,” Madson said.

Although he hasn’t been hearing much chatter around the office, he knows the gossip will pick up. One thing Madson is concerned about is any potential retaliation.

“But then you’ve got to wonder if someone else will just step into his shoes,” he added.

Although many are celebrating the death of bin Laden, Madson said it’s too bad they couldn’t capture him alive. Either way, he’s still happy they caught him.

“It’s good that hopefully we can start closing the chapter, that portion of how terrible that all was,” Madson said.

And the end of a chapter is exactly how others are describing the situation.

Sgt. 1st Class Rod Haworth, of Bravo Company 2nd Batallion, 135th Infantry Regiment, said, “It closed the chapter; the story isn’t over. It closed the chapter on an event in our history that changed a lot of things.”

Haworth is getting ready to deploy to Kuwait, but he won’t speculate what the worldwide reaction to Bin Laden will be, or how the U.S. will handle it.

Haworth and other National Guardsmen have discussed bin Ladens capture and kill Monday, but they’re not going to dwell on it, he said. “Now that we’ve talked about it, we have a job to do.”