With her husband stationed half a world away, Susan Chater went shopping for a Christmas turkey and found plenty of company.

"I went into the store to find a small turkey and everybody is looking for a small turkey because all our husbands are away," says Chater, who works herself as a corporal at CFB Petawawa in Eastern Ontario.

Chater's husband Rob is in Bosnia, one of 2,800 soldiers from the nearly-empty base who'll be overseas this holiday season.

Another contingent from Petawawa is part of the international security force in Kabul, Afghanistan. That's where Corporal Trevor Patterson will be spending the holidays, away from his five-year-old son Dylan and his infant daughter Eve. It's the second time in the past five years Patterson hasn't been home for Christmas.

"The first time he was in Bosnia and he missed Dylan's first Christmas," says wife Renee, bouncing the couple's daughter on her knee. "Then he had a Bosnia tour in between there and now he's going to miss Eve's first Christmas.

"It's a little bit rough when they are gone over the holidays."

The current Afghanistan tour has been even tougher for Renee. Two of her husband's fellow soldiers, Sergeant Robert Allan Short, and Corporal Robbie Beerenfenger, were killed when their jeep hit a land mine in October. Both Short and Beerenfenger were fathers, and their families were friends of the Pattersons.

"It's scary," says Renee. "Most of the time that he's gone you have that nervous feeling."

On the mostly-deserted base, many families are getting together for a combined Christmas dinner.

Warrant Officer Gloria Buchanan says it's an emotional strain being home while so many colleagues are away.

"It can be difficult," she says. "You have ups and downs. You have good days and bad days just like everybody else, but your good are very good and your bad are really bad. It depends on what's going on over there."

At the Chater household, what Susan and her children miss most is Rob's sense of humour.

"We want him to come home," she says. "He's the crazy one. He's silly, he's laughter."

With a report from CTV's Rosemary Thomspon.