As he’s gone through four deployments to Iraq, things have changed back home for Sgt. 1st Class John Roames.

The war used to be front-page news. Now he gets asked if U.S. troops are still there.

On this deployment, he’s contacted "a couple old friends that have said a couple of times, ‘I thought we were out of Iraq,’" the Schofield Barracks soldier said by phone from Forward Operating Base Cobra in Diyala province.

Even his grandmother had to be convinced.

"I had to explain to his grandma several times that he really, really is in Iraq and he really, really is staying there for a year," said Roames’ wife, Nicole. "She thought when combat operations ended, he was coming home."

President Barack Obama announced an end to U.S. combat missions in Iraq on Aug. 31.

Just under 50,000 U.S. troops remain in Iraq for stability operations, including 3,700 from Hawaii’s Stryker Brigade, who left Hawaii in July. Another 800 with the 25th Infantry Division headquarters will deploy next month.

As the nation observes the Veterans Day holiday today, there are two ongoing wars — and many sacrifices big and small in them — that large segments of the American public seem to want to forget, experts say.

Nine years of war — the longest sustained combat in American history — has brought with it a weariness with Iraq and Afghanistan for the public at home, and a raft of problems for an all-volunteer force that keeps going back, including depression, suicides and marital breakups.

At a lecture at Duke University in September, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said a "tiny sliver of America has achieved extraordinary things," but there have been human costs for the troops and their families, and cultural, social and financial costs in the relationships between those in uniform and the wider society they have sworn to protect.

The nation has come a long way from the 1960s and 1970s when too many troops returning from Vietnam were greeted with sullen indifference or worse, Gates said.

"It is also true, however, that whatever their fond sentiments for men and women in uniform, for most Americans the wars remain an abstraction, a distant and unpleasant series of news items that does not affect them personally," Gates said.

The wars were absent from midterm elections. Polls show that a vast majority of Americans oppose the war in Iraq, and don’t think it was worth the U.S. blood or treasure spent on it.

A recent Newsweek article argues that Americans are turning inward and away from foreign policy, with Ohio State University professor John Mueller saying the public’s attention "can be diverted by major threats or by explicit, specific and dramatic dangers to American lives, but once those concerns fade, people return their attention to domestic issues."

With the economy in such bad shape, only 3 percent of Americans even mentioned Afghanistan in a September New York Times/CBS News poll on the most important problems facing the nation.

Iraq, meanwhile, has traded places with Afghanistan — itself neglected for years — as the forgotten war.

The Roames family has seen the slide in public support since John Roames first returned from the war after the 2003 invasion. At that time, the Bradenton, Fla., man was south of Baghdad corralling Iraqi weapons caches.

When he returned to Fort Sill, Okla., "people lined the streets," his wife recalled. "They were out there waving flags, there were yellow ribbons everywhere, cheering as the bus went by.

It used to be that when they went out in uniform, strangers would pay for dinner for them and walk up and say, "Thank you," Nicole Roames said.

They were at a funeral in South Bend, Ind., for John’s grandfather, and John wore his uniform.

"Three different people in the restaurant afterwards came up to him and said, ‘We just want to thank you for what you are doing,’" she said. "Something like that hasn’t happened in the last few years."

Soldiers including Roames downplay the lack of attention. But they notice it.

"It’s nice to see the progression of Iraq," Roames said. "I was in the war in 2003 and saw it from the beginning. It doesn’t really affect me what people in the United States see as much as what I’m seeing in Iraq."

Sgt. 1st Class Edward Kea, 37, a Stryker Brigade soldier who is at Forward Operating Base Warhorse in Diyala province, said he focuses on the importance of the mission.

"What we do between now and December of 2011 is critical right now for a lot of the Iraqi people, (for them) to take over," the 1990 Waianae High School graduate said. "I wish there would be more in the papers, but it really doesn’t matter because I know what we’re doing is important."

The U.S. had planned to be out of Iraq by the end of 2011. U.S. forces have dropped from a high of nearly 170,000 during the surge in 2007, to less than 50,000 now.

But Gates said Tuesday in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, that the U.S. is leaving options open for extending troop presence in the country.

The commander of Hawaii’s Stryker Brigade, Col. Malcolm Frost, said in September that his soldiers were spread across 11 bases in Salhuddin and Diyala provinces in the north of Iraq.

They now have an "advise and assist" mission to continue to train Iraqi security forces.

The mission has been quieter than it has been in years. Maj. John Herrman, the operations officer for the Hawaii-based 2nd Battalion, 11th Field Artillery Regiment, at Joint Base Balad, said about 300 of the unit’s 500 soldiers head out every day to work with Iraqi counterparts.

There are usually fewer than 10 violent "events" a month aimed at the Americans, often taking the form of a stray mortar or rocket, Herrman said.

"We have not had any significant activity that involved my soldiers shooting a round at anybody," Herrman said. "What’s going on now is actually a good thing, if we’re not in the limelight. The lack of media attention has no impact on our operations. We understand the nation has shifted its priorities. I don’t think that diminishes our resolve or determination."

Nicole Roames, the military wife whose husband now is on his fourth Iraq tour, said the lack of national attention may be more difficult to swallow than some of the soldiers let on.

"It’s probably hard on them to know that they are being forgotten, (that) their sacrifice is being passed over," she said.

Her children, ages 12 and 9, have been without a dad for the four years that John Roames will have been in Iraq.

Four Stryker Brigade soldiers have been killed — two by an Iraqi army soldier, one by a roadside bomb and one in a grenade attack on a vehicle.

Nicole Roames said communication with her husband isn’t as good because the U.S. is dismantling its operations in Iraq.

Back home, meanwhile, couples that made it through one or two deployments are splitting up after the third or fourth, she said. The divorce rate for Army enlisted soldiers has nearly doubled since the wars began, according to the Pentagon.

There are the smaller sacrifices.

Kea, the soldier who graduated from Waianae High, won’t be there in person to see his son, Edward Kea Jr., who is on the Leilehua football team, play in the game against Baldwin.

He said he will be able to see it on OC16-TV.

"The video quality maybe could be a little better, but I mean, I can see the game," he said. "I wish I was there, of course."

Nicole Roames has this advice this Veterans Day: "Thank a military family — not just a service member — because the family sacrifices, too," she said.