FORT HOOD, Texas - Thursday, while the rest of the country watched on television what was going on in Fort Hood, Kira Oesau of Union Grove was under lockdown in a helicopter hangar on base.

One moment she was working. Then the next minute she received a text message from someone else on base saying that at least six people had been shot.

At first she didn't know what to make of it, but then commanders ordered everyone to stay in the hangar. She called her parents and put updates on Facebook to let people know what was going on, but she couldn't leave, she said.

Oesau, 21, graduated from Union Grove High School in 2006.

"It seems like everyone is still trying to figure out what happened," said Oesau, just the day after America's worst mass shooting at a military base.

She has been to Iraq, but Oesau said, "I probably had more fear here when this was happening than in Iraq."

In Iraq, you see it coming, Oesau said, "Here you don't expect it."

She said she has heard stories about people "cracking" after they returned from war, but it's "unbelievable for it to happen here," Oesau said.