By Connie Mabin
The Associated Press

CLEVELAND - Somewhere in America this week, a wife will get a Valentine from her soldier husband stationed in Iraq.

Children have gotten birthday messages from military mothers serving an ocean away. Friends have received greetings from buddies who managed to get a card from the back of an Army truck, a tent pitched in the desert or a makeshift hangar at Baghdad International Airport.

Cleveland-based American Greetings Corp. operates 50 front-line stores in Iraq. The world's largest publicly traded greeting card company, which bought the former Gibson Greetings Inc. of Amberley Village in 2000, fills each store with up to 600 cards - from Valentines to "missing you" messages.

"It's just our part to help connect the soldiers and their families back home," said Donna Eyerman, field manager of national accounts for American Greetings.

The company works with Army Air Force Exchange Services to ship the cards from the United States, set up the tents and offer discounted greetings to soldiers who otherwise would be left with old-fashioned pen and paper to send words home.

Hallmark Cards Inc. doesn't sell on the front lines, but the Kansas City, Mo.-based company does sell cards at 175 military bases around the world, spokeswoman Kristi Ernsting said.

"We understand the power of greeting cards to help keep people connected with one another, and we're honored to play that role, especially for those men and women serving in the military and stationed so far from home," she said.

Rebecca Fleharty of suburban Dayton welcomed the tent store idea. Her husband, Mike Fleharty, is stationed in Tikrit with the Army Reserve's 705th Transportation Company and sent home holiday wishes "that looked like a 3-year-old made," Fleharty said with a chuckle.

"Even he felt bad that he couldn't find that Hallmark-type card," she said. "I just think everything about (the tent stores) is awesome, it's a great idea."

The program began in November 2002 when American Greetings cards were sold off the back of military trucks. Word spread, soldiers asked for more and the company opened the desert tent stores. Some stores were lost in combat; others were abandoned because of security reasons.

At first, the location of the tents were kept secret from American Greetings employees because of security. Soldiers were unsure from one day to the next where the stores would pop up.

The locations were unclassified when major combat ended and now a semi-permanent location exists inside a hangar at the Baghdad airport.

Eyerman won't reveal sales figures but said more than 2 million cards have been shipped to the stores since the program began. Soldiers and military employees who get a 20 percent discount have sent e-mails and letters praising the program.

"Life here can be really stressful, and it's really nice to have something that reminds you of home, something to send back to your loved ones because they're the only thing you have," Pvt. Frederick Rouse of the 72nd Signal Battalion said.

It's not the first time American Greetings has tied a product to the war, but it's the first time it's sold cards on the front lines.

Last year, the company sold patriotic cards intended to boost troop morale in the U.S., and it offered a line of cards for the Gulf War in 1991.

Analysts have said American Greetings' military offerings are too small to have a major effect the bottom line. The company has annual sales of $2 billion.