| Biographical Notes |
 Note: Mondy was regarded by his many girl cousins as a romantic figure and in the photograph of him taken at Meerut, India in his dress uniform of the crack British Regiment, the 17th Lancers, he lives up to their ideals. Soon after leaving school at Melbourne he went to Sydney from where he commenced his travels. To reach England he obtained the position of purser on a cruise ship and at London found employment at the Army and Navy Stores. He joined the British Army at the age of 19 in 1903. Prospective officers in the old regiments were required to supply some account of their ancestry. This started Osmond senior on research of his ancestry. Mondy served with the Lancashire Fusilliers 17th Lancers (Cavalry) in India and remained with the army for 10 years. He resigned with the rank of Captain in the English summer of 1913. While looking for suitable occupation he stayed at Clapton, London with Edward John Sharpe, a distant Reeves relative, a descendant of Mary Ann Coleman, sister of Mondy's great grandmother Charlotte Martha Reeves (nee Kemp). Mr. Sharpe was at that time corresponding with Reeves descendants in South Australia. E.M.S. has a packet of 25 of these letters. Nothing in England suited Mondy, by then aged 29, so he took ship to Canada and joined the North West Mounted Police. There is a photograph of him in uniform mounted on a well groomed horse.World War 1 began. He was still on the British Army Reserve, so was called up 1915. On the back of his picture in the uniform of a Captain, Royal Field Artillery, he wrote:
Shaburyness,
22 September 1915
Dear Mother,
I am at the Artillery School of Instruction here learning gunnery. I am having a fairly stiff time of it and working very hard by day studying in the evening. I am keeping quite well and having very good messing [i.e. meals].
My love to all, your loving son,
Mondy.
He served both in Egypt and France where at the latter, he was badly gassed. He did an officers course at Heytesbury House, Wiltshire.
On demobilisation, again with the rank of captain, he returned to Victoria and took up a soldier settlement block at Red Cliffs, River Murray, Victoria. His sister May kept house for him. His lungs were affected by the German gas and tuberculosis ensued. He left Australia in the early part of 1926 with the intention of entering a Swiss Clinic which treated this illness, but at Nice, France, in July, he was taken ill and unable to continue further. He died there on July 3rd. He was aged 41.
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Reports
Osmond Allen McLeod Mondy WILSON
