Alex Mason enlisted in the 77th Battalion in August 1915 in his hometown Ottawa at the age of 17. By October of the same year he would ship out for England with 250 men in a re-enforcing draft from the 77th Battalion.

After a year of training, Mason went over to France in September 1916 to join the 2nd Battalion CEF at the Somme. He arrived at the tail end of that campaign, but would serve detached with the 1st Canadian Machine Gun Battalion as an ammo carrier at Vimy Ridge, in the trenches at Hill 70 with the 2nd Battalion, and in the mud at Passchendaele.

It was at the latter battle as a Lewis gunner that he would win the Military Medal for capturing a German machine gun nest. Alex Mason was promoted to Sergeant in early 1918, but fell victim to a shell fragment in the upper back near Loos, in France. Wounded, he was sent back to England, where he spent the rest of the war, returning to Canada in May 1919.

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