SEMPHER FI FOR THIS LI JARHEAD
Marines’ first combat gal
She was born behind bars in Siberia, and remained there for two years until her incarcerated mother died.
She moved on to a Russian orphanage, where the workers’ idea of apple juice was soaking rotten fruit in water.
If that wasn’t bad enough, when Maria Daume and her brother were adopted by a Long Island family, she was mercilessly bullied by classmates.
But Daume’s struggles didn’t break her — and now the hardened 18-year-old has made history as one of the first women picked for ground-combat training in the Marine Corps.
“Why can’t I do it if a man can do it? Like, that doesn’t make sense,” said the former Newfield HS basketball star, who joined the fabled ranks of the few and the proud when she graduated Friday from boot camp on Parris Island in South Carolina.
While women have served in various capacities in the Marines for decades, Daume is among the first four females to ever be recruited to continue on to the corps’ infantry school.
Defense Secretary Ash Carter paved the way for the move in December 2015 when he removed gender-based restrictions on combat.
Daume quickly became a poster grunt-in-training for the Marines after throwing her training cap in the ring.
“I want to fight ISIS,” Daume has said.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re a male, female. It doesn’t mean that you can’t fight,’’ the Suffolk County resident insisted in a posting on the New York Marines’ In- stagram account, which includes video of her punching a boxingring dummy.
Maria and her twin brother, Nikolai, were born while their mom was being held in a Russian prison on an undisclosed charge. The children spent the first two years of their lives behind bars until their mother died.
They then lived in a Moscow orphanage for another two years before being adopted by Maureen and John Daume of Selden.
Maria Daume told the Island Packet newspaper of Hilton Head, SC, that she remembers little from her early years in Russia — except that she won’t drink apple juice to this day because of the vile version offered at the orphanage.
But she said she clearly remembers being bullied as a child after coming to the United States.
“It would be for being Russian or being adopted. They would say things about my mom and why she was in prison, even if no one knew why,” she said, according to the Marine Corps Times.
Daume eventually took mixed martial arts and jiu jitsu to stand up for herself.
“With MMA, it is all about staying calm and not getting angry,” she said. “If you get angry you can make stupid mistakes. I know how to get hit and keep cool.’’
Daume’s childhood pal Shannon Doherty, 18, told The Post on Tuesday, “If anything, [bullying] motivated her to be the person she is.
“I couldn’t see her doing anything else’’ than combat, Doherty acknowledged.
“She would say ... ‘I’d almost feel too safe’ ’’ not doing it. “She almost wants to be on the front line . . . She has this protective instinct about her. She always had my back and everyone else’s.’’
The Marines were the obvious choice for Daume, her brother told The Post.
She became hooked at age 12, when the siblings took part in a Relay For Life fund-raiser for their aunt, who had been diagnosed with cancer. Some Marines showed up at the event to hold pull-up and push-up competitions.
“My sister did it, and she fell in love with it,” said Nikolai, who is studying forensic science at the University of New Haven.
When Carter finally cleared the way for women in combat, Daume jumped at the opportunity to apply for the infantry.
“I was driving when [my recruiter] called me,” Daume told the Marine Corps Times. “He said, ‘Are you sure you want this?’ I said confidently, ‘Yes.’ ”
Daume officially joined the ranks of the Marines on Jan. 6, when she completed the grueling, 54-hour rite of passage known at the Crucible and was handed the iconic eagle, globe and anchor pin. Infantry training starts next week.
Charmaine de Wit, 19, who went through boot camp with Daume, told The Post that her buddy “definitely knew what it all meant, in a sense of how big this is in the Marine Corps,’’ by continuing on to ground combat.
“I don’t think I could do it,’’ de Wit said. “She’s awesome. She’s hard-headed. She holds her own. She doesn’t let anyone tell her she can’t do anything.’’
Daume declined to comment to The Post, as did her mother, Maureen. Her father died of a heart attack about two years ago.
Daume’s grandmother, Mary Dawson, simply said, “I’m proud of her.’’
The family was on hand to cheer her at graduation from boot camp.
Her brother admitted that he pulled a little sibling prank on the newly minted Marine, who was among 120 women to graduate.
“It was astonishing. She was emotional because we told her that her friends weren’t gonna come and see her,” he recalled.
“But they did — and she started to cry.”