City twins look back on many happy returns

But on November 2, 1942 a visit to her Craigmillar home from George's parents put a stop to her plans. The Forbeses had just received a telegram which coldly stated that their youngest son had been killed, aged just 27.

George, serving as a private in the 51st (Highland Division) Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders, and fighting at El Alamein, was not going to be coming home to marry the girl he had met at Broughton High when she was just 17. And it was up to his parents to break the devastating news to Mary.

But unlike thousands of other women bereaved in the Second World War, Mary's story was to take another twist.

Just six weeks after being told her husband-to-be had been killed, Mary received a letter from George informing her that he was very much alive.

"I was so relieved and extremely happy," says Mary - who has just celebrated her 90th birthday along with twin sister Margaret. "The letter read: 'Very much alive writing' and was signed by George. That was all it said - that was all he could do at the time because they were busy fighting."

She adds: "When I was told he was dead, it was devastating. It was very, very, upsetting. But it appears he never knew anything about being reported killed until he met up with a chap that we knew from Edinburgh, and he said to him 'you're dead'. That's how he heard he had been reported killed.

"It came as a shock to him so he knew it must've been a shock to us.

"He has no idea why he was reported killed except to say that whoever checked the bodies hadn't gone far enough forward, which is where he was."

Despite receiving two life-changing telegrams, it was more than a year before George, by now a sergeant, could be reunited with his future wife. The pair married in December 1943, going on to have a daughter, also called Mary.

If the twist surrounding George's physical wellbeing wasn't enough, their wedding followed just three months after that of Mary's twin Margaret to George's older brother James, with both couples tying the knot at Warrender Park Church.

Margaret was introduced to James, who was seven years older than George, on New Year's Day 1941 after Mary took her along to George's home. They hit it off straight away, married three years later and went on to have three children, nine grandchildren and a great-grandson.

But there was no double dating to follow as James, who was known as Hamish, was posted to India with the Royal Pay Corps, where he remained until after the war, when he and Margaret set up home on Northumberland Street in 1946.

Two sisters being married to two brothers was certainly novel, especially when one had been declared dead. So much so that the remarkable story was documented on the front page of the long-gone People's Journal for Edinburgh and the Southern Counties.

Margaret had safely kept the cutting, which was only just discovered by her daughter Margaret Minto, as they planned the sisters' 90th birthday celebrations earlier this year.

Dated December 18, 1943 and priced just two pence, the Journal's report told how Mary and Margaret, who grew up in Corstorphine and Craigmillar, had married George and James within months of each other, with the headline "Bridegroom Returned from the 'Dead', Edinburgh Twins Married to Brothers".

Although it was the first time she had seen a copy of the newspaper, Margaret Minto, who is in her 50s and lives in the Grange, had previously been told about her uncle George "coming back from the dead" when she was a youngster.

"When I was first told the story, I thought it was a bit unreal - it was like something out of a film," she recalls. "They didn't talk about it much. That was the generation that didn't talk about their emotions."

The mother-of-three, a support worker at the Sick Kids hospital, adds: "If George had been killed, I would never have known him. I think it's so good that my mum kept the newspaper because I passed it around the family for them to see.

"When I found the newspaper, I just thought it was so poignant. It's actually living history because my mum and my auntie are still alive."

The twins' mother, Margaret Cameron, is quoted in the article saying: "It's nice to think that our twin daughters have married brothers."

She adds: "After receiving such a shock during their romance, they (George and Mary] deserve to be very happy and I have no doubt they will be."

Certainly Mary says they were very happy, although there were always complications when you shared parents-in-law with your sister, and all the children had the same grandparents.

"You share your relatives as well as sharing everything else," Mary says. "All our lives everything has been duplicated. And you're compared all the time, even though we weren't in the least bit alike. Why did I have homework and Margaret didn't, our report cards, everything, and the presents were one between two at birthdays and Christmas.

"I didn't mind it really but you don't feel very individual if you're a twin and married to brothers."

Mary and Margaret marked their 90th birthday on June 10 with a party at the Minto Hotel. "It doesn't feel any different to be 90," Mary says. "In my head, I'm still young and fit."

However, the family party was the first time the sisters, who are both widows, had seen each other in around two years as Mary now lives in Duns - although distance is something they got used to after the war. George's job as an executive officer in the War Office meant he and Mary travelled a lot, with spells in Egypt and Singapore, among other countries.

However, the couples and their children still managed to enjoy a number of joint holidays in the 1950s. Mary recalls: "When George and I were posted back to Edinburgh, I then saw a lot of Margaret. Being married to brothers meant we met up quite a lot and we went on holidays together. The children were good pals."

Although George, who also fought on D-Day and was later awarded the Military Cross, survived the war - he died in 1985 after suffering a stroke, while James passed away in 1997 - the twins' younger brother John, a navigator in the RAF, wasn't so lucky.

His plane was shot down during a night raid over Bremen in June 1942 and he was confirmed dead six months later. His body was never recovered.

"It broke my mother's heart because he was only 19," Mary says. "She just never got over it."

Strangely the death notices for both George and John appeared in the newspaper on the same day, although it wasn't long after their publication that Mary received George's telegram confirming that he was in fact alive and paving the way for the twins' mirror-image lives to begin.