The tale of two boys who grew up in the slums and died in another country's war

Jose Antonio grew up in Guatemala in the 1980s; Thaer Othman was born in the Palestinian refugee camp of Bourj el-Barajneh

You are free to draw any conclusions you want from the following, but I don't offer it as a consciously moral tale, or a polemic on the iniquities of the world. It is the story of two young men who died within days of each other in the same country, both 28, two lives that were remarkably similar and which ended before their time. So two stories really, worth telling for no other sake than their own.

Both of these kids grew up in slums and both died fighting in another country's war. They were children of civil war themselves. Jose Antonio grew up in Guatamala in the 1980s when the US-backed government there was busy torturing its own people. Thaer Othman was born in the Palestinian refugee camp of Bourj el-Barajneh. He experienced Lebanon's sectarian civil war, the Israeli invasion of 1982 and later the "war of the camps", when Syria sent its proxies to destroy the PLO in Bourj el-Barajneh. The camp was filled with those who had lost their homes further south when the State of Israel was declared in 1948.

Let us start with Jose Antonio's story. He was eight years old when he and his sister were orphaned. I haven't been able to find out how their parents died. But the children – Jose Antonio Gutierrez and his sister Encina – were left to look out for themselves. The children drifted on to the streets. In the world of the slums, a world with no safety nets, no social security, where the extended families of the countryside have been broken down and dispersed, there is often no alternative but the begging, stealing, prostitution, the desperation of the streets. After his parents died, Jose Antonio went to work in a steel factory – it was virtual slave labour. He was then taken in by a family, but he could not, or would not, settle.

Jose Antonio might have become one of the vanished thousands, had it not been for the intervention of one of the world's more remarkable charities. Caza Alianza runs homes and schools for street children in Honduras and Guatamala. Jose Antonio's sister Encina had been taken in by another family, but someone told the boy about Caza Alianza. He went there and he studied hard. He became a good soccer player, he learned English. Later Caza Alianza would help him to learn the rudiments of technical drawing, preparation for becoming an architect.

Those who knew him then say there was something powerful driving him, something inside that would not allow him to self-destruct as had happened to so many of his friends. There was too, they say, a sadness in Jose Antonio. Bruce Harris, the Englishman who runs the Caza programme, remembered the "quietness" that would overtake the boisterous young footballer.

At the age of 22, Jose Antonio decided to make the journey of his life. He knew that in Guatamala he could never afford the university education needed to become an architect. So he said goodbye to his sister Encina and his friends, and took the roads and the rails north to the US. Three thousand miles. Across the steaming valleys and mountains and the dry deserts he went; hitching lifts and jumping freight trains until he became one of the " wetbacks" and crossed the Rio Grande into America. Some 50,000 street children and teenagers make this journey every year. In the US borderlands, the ranchers hunt down the illegals and turn them over to the Immigration Service. They are not wanted.

Jose Antonio was picked up and detained by the Immigration and Naturalisation Service – the fabled and much-feared INS. But he was a persuasive boy and looked younger than his years. He said he was only 17 years old. They believed him. As a minor, he was entitled to asylum. So he got to stay, and he was fostered with a Latino family in Lomita, California.

So began the story of his American life. He went to high school and studied hard. What he wanted most of all was US citizenship, in order to be able to bring his beloved sister Encina to join him. He decided to sign up with the US Marine Corps, knowing that military service would speed his citizenship application.

Half a world away, Thaer Othman had made a decision of his own, and his journey was no less epic. Unlike Jose Antonio, he had grown up in a close-knit family. But his environment was just as poor and he determined to leave the Middle East. In Lebanon, Palestinians are denied employment and social rights (this from an Arab government that regularly lectures the Israelis on their treatment of Palestinians). Thaer studied and made his way to Denmark, where he settled, married, and became father to a son. Like so many emigrés, he sent money back to his family regularly. And like so many exiles, he dreamed of a home that would never be his; in Thaer's case, the land left behind by his forefathers in 1948.

And then, a few weeks ago, the war on Iraq began. The way his brother tells it, Thaer Othman was watching it on television in Denmark, and became so disgusted by the civilian casualties that he made up his mind to go to Iraq. So he headed home for Beirut and joined up with a unit of Arab volunteers heading for Baghdad.

There wasn't any element of choice for Jose Antonio. He got his orders to go last January. He called his sister in Guatamala City, and told her he was going to war. As Encina remembers it, this is what he said; "Take good care of yourself. I am going to war. Pray to God a lot for me. God willing I will return alive."

Jose Antonio won't be going home, and neither will Thaer. They died within a few days of each other. Last week, with the ground attack on Iraq in its opening hours, Jose Antonio was with his unit in the port of Umm Qasr when he was struck in the chest by a high velocity bullet. He died instantly. Thaer was travelling in a minibus – he had yet to fire a shot – when it was hit by an American missile. He died in a Baghdad hospital.

This week, the street children of Caza Alianza gathered with old friends of Jose Antonio and his sister Encina at a quiet plot close to the coffee plantations of Antigua Guatamala, where scores of murdered street children are buried. They said prayers for Jose Antonio and remembered his life among them. Encina said she was proud of her brother but heartbroken. On the shaded slopes of Antigua Guatamala, it was the loss of a beloved brother and friend that was at the heart of things.

There is a brief postscript. A few days ago, the US government announced it was granting posthumous citizenship to Jose Antonio. Thaer Othman was a Danish citizen, though someone at his funeral said the Danes were taking away his citizenship now that he was dead.

As I said at the outset, you can draw any lesson you want from these two stories, but I had none in mind, except maybe to ask that we compel ourselves to seek out and remember names, faces, stories. In war, they are all that's left of our torn humanity.

The writer is a BBC Special Correspondent