World War I This new section will eventually contain various information on American military history related to the First World War. As more materials are scanned or otherwise digitized, they will be posted to this section and with this, made available to researchers and others interested in military history. If you are a VMPA member and have interesting World War I items in your collection, please send images and text to our webmaster for inclusion on this site.   Close Combat Weapons The following are scans of a World War One manual on close combat weapons, published in July 1917. Please click on the thumbnails to see the individual pages at full size, then use your browser's "back" button to return to this page.