For Marine Wives, Lonely Holiday Is Price of Peace : Military: Solitary Christmases at home come with the job when spouses marry a career as well as the person.

It is Christmas again, and, once more, Maria Compton and Sharon Kelly are spending the holiday alone, separated from their Marine husbands who are keeping the peace in a distant land.

Both women knew what they were in for when they married Marines. But Compton and Kelly said they had no clue that loving a Marine also meant enduring so many unexpected separations at Christmastime.

However, as a Marine wife, “you learn to adjust,” each woman said ruefully, while trying to sound convincing at the same time. On Wednesday, they joined other Marine clans at a base Christmas party planned for families whose loved ones are serving in Somalia.

Compton’s and Kelly’s husbands are assigned to the 3rd Battalion 9th Marine Regiment, an infantry unit that has spent two of the last three Christmases in foreign lands and is scheduled to be deployed in the western Pacific Ocean during Christmas, 1993. Because it is a combat unit, the regiment is composed entirely of men.

Unless the Marine Corps brass suddenly shows pity for “Three Nine,” as the regiment is called in the shorthand vernacular of Camp Pendleton, the Comptons and Kellys probably won’t share a Christmas until 1994.

Compton, 22, and Gunnery Sgt. James Compton have been married almost three years, spending only one holiday season together. In 1990, Gunnery Sgt. Compton, 32, spent Christmas in Saudi Arabia, preparing for battle against the Iraqi army.

Kelly has been married to Lance Cpl. James Kelly, 28, for almost four years. Kelly, 34, has spent only two Christmases with her husband. This year’s separation is especially painful, because the couple’s son, 3-year-old James Francis Kelly III, is old enough to miss the routine he shared with his father, Sharon Kelly said.

The youngster, who is accustomed to seeing his father walk through the door each afternoon at about the time that Batman airs on television, cannot understand why Daddy is not coming home these days, his mother said.

“I tell him that Daddy’s at work and had to go far away for a while,” she said.

Like Gunnery Sgt. Compton, Lance Cpl. Kelly spent Christmas, 1990, in the desert sands of Saudi Arabia, preparing for the ground assault into Kuwait.

“When we got married, I knew I was marrying his career as well,” said Sharon Kelly, who, like her husband, is from Pittsburgh. “The Marine Corps is his job, his life. He likes what he’s doing. But believe me, it doesn’t make the separations any easier, particularly at Christmas.”

Being apart in 1990 was especially painful for Maria Compton, who is from the Mexican state of Sinaloa. At the time, she had been in the United States for only a short while and spoke very little English, and could read and write even less. Her husband, a native of Austin, Tex., cannot read or write Spanish, and wrote his letters to her in English.

“That experience forced me to adapt. I learned to read and write English. I was alone in a strange land, but we’re a Marine family and I learned to adjust and became very independent. I surprised myself by what I’ve become and what I’ve been able to do by myself. My husband is very proud of me,” said Compton.

Although the Comptons have been married almost three years, they have actually spent only a few precious months together. After Gunnery Sgt. Compton’s eight-month deployment to the Persian Gulf in 1990, he returned home for two months and was gone for another two months for training.

There have been other separations since then. Compton had just returned home in November from a four-month training stint in New Mexico before being sent to Somalia in December.

“Is it any wonder that we don’t have any children yet?” said Maria Compton. “But from the beginning he told me that he was a Marine and sometimes the Marine Corps comes first. He belongs to the Marines first, and then he belongs to me.”

Indeed, both Compton and Kelly said that the Marine Corps is the “other woman” in their lives--one they view as more demanding than alluring. The nature of the mission in Somalia, however, makes the separation a little easier to accept, Kelly said.

“Oh, there were tears shed. But my husband said he’s going over there to help the children. He said that if something happened to him, but he got to help feed at least one child, he had done his duty,” said Kelly.

Compton agreed. “He’s away from me again, but he’s involved in a very good cause,” she said. “He’s really helping those poor people. The only thing I worry about this time are the diseases over there.”