THE FRIDAY FOTO: March 3, 2023

ARRANGEMENT IN PINK AND BLUE No. 1

(U.S. Defense Department photo by Jason W. Edwards) Click on the photo to enlarge the image.

Both the women in this photo are Army nurses, Army captains and both named Megan. What are the odds?

In this strikingly lit photo we see emergency trauma nurses Captain Megan Honeywell and Captain Megan Gross — we’re not 100 percent sure which is which — treating a simulated patient during the Tactical Trauma Reaction and Evacuation Crossover Course (TTREX) at Joint Base San Antonio in Lackland, Texas on  February 23, 2023.

The eight-hour course incorporates battlefield trauma simulations, evacuation procedures, and forward resuscitative care in an austere environment. More than 40 participants took part in the first time, two-day exercise developed to give medics and nurses hands-on experience.

In addition to liking the way this photo was lit, we thought it was the perfect subject to kick off Women’s History Month at the 4GWAR Blog.

And yes, art mavens, the headline at the top is an homage to American painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler’s 1871 work, Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1, known the world over as “Whistler’s Mother.”

Interesting to note, Whistler, the son of a West Point-educated U.S. Army engineer, was an Army man himself — briefly. The younger Whistler was admitted to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York in 1851, where he excelled in drawing classes. But he chafed at the Point’s rules, regulations and largely scientific curriculum as well as Army dress and drill. As the demerits mounted, then-West Point Superintendent Robert E. Lee finally lost patience with the eccentric youth, and Whistler was dismissed from the academy in 1854.

Whistler’s younger brother, William, became a physician and served as a field surgeon in the Confederate Army during the Civil War, which — we guess — brings us full circle to a photo of today’s U.S. Army medicos.