Can you tell me more about these WWII cards?

by ajc165

Found them in the attic. No one in my family served, so its a mystery. Can any one tell me what they are? Too small for photographs, so more like trading cards perhaps?

http://imgur.com/a/COt9U

cubshound

They're actually from WWI, not WWII. They depict a gas attack which is not a tactic used during WWII, there is a picture of Argonne which makes perfect sense for a WWI context, the tank is a prototype design that would have first appeared at the tail end of WWI, the artillery pieces and uniforms are also representative of the designs used in WWI.

Given the way the pictures are labeled and the difficulty of some of the shots they are most likely a collectible series sold to a mass audience. It was a relatively common practice for publishers to release these collections as there would be significant demand for them. The earliest such collection I've seen dates back to the Civil War and similar collections came out immediately following Desert Storm.