The first jaguar litter since 1975 was born at the Milwaukee County Zoo to Stella and Pat on November 13, 2013. The litter was on public display for the first time on March 13 when the jaguar baby's names were released. Belize schoolchildren named one Zean, which is the end of Belizean, and a public contest named the other B'alam, which means "great and powerful king" in Mayan. Photo: Stella the mother and her cub Zean rest together at The Milwaukee County Zoo. (Photo by Rick Wood)

In the spring of 1965, within weeks of 3,500 American Marines arriving in Vietnam, a 39-year-old Briton named Larry Burrows began work on a feature for LIFE magazine, chronicling the day-to-day experience of U.S. troops on the ground – and in the air – in the midst of the rapidly widening war. The photographs in this gallery focus on a calamitous March 31, 1965, helicopter mission; Burrows’ “report from Da Nang”, featuring his pictures and his personal account of the harrowing operation, was published two weeks later as a now-famous cover story in the April 16, 1965, issue of LIFE.

Photo: Man your battle stations: The crew chief of helicopter Yankee Papa 13, lance corporal James C. Farley, mans an M-60 machine gun during a mission near Da Nang, Vietnam on March 31, 1965. (Photo by Larry Burrows/Time & Life Pictures)

Garbage pickers collect ride on donkey cart while looking for recyclable materials at a rubbish dump in the outskirts of Baghdad, Iraq, August 23, 2016. Despite its huge untapped oil and gas reserves and steadily rising oil output and revenue, 23 percent of the population live below the poverty line, according to the Ministry of Planning. (Photo by Khalid al Mousily/Reuters)

A Maasai woman arrives with collected firewoods at a village nearby Selenkay Conservancy, a community-owned conservation area running by a private company, in Amboseli, Kenya, on June 22, 2022. The camp's ten luxurious tents see tourists flocking again, after the shutdown linked to Covid-19. They observe in small groups elephants, giraffes, antelopes or lions on 5,000 hectares, located on the edge of Amboseli National Park, in the south of the country, and have a glimpse of the life of the Masai, the owners of the land. (Photo by Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP Photo)

American social media personality, golf instructor and former professional golfer Paige Spiranac attends MAXIM Hot 100 Experience at Hyde Beach at SLS South Beach on July 16, 2022 in Miami Beach, Florida. (Photo by Aaron Davidson/Getty Images)

People assist a woman who was exposed to tear gas by pouring milk over her face after police fired tear gas and water canon to try and disperse protesters outside Parliament on November 17, 2020 in Bangkok, Thailand. The demonstrators gathered outside parliament, on Tuesday, as the Thai government met to discuss amendments to the country's constitution. (Photo by Lauren DeCicca/Getty Images)

A vender arranges goods for sale at a market on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, Argentina, Wednesday, January 10, 2024. (Photo by Natacha Pisarenko/AP Photo)

A dead crocodile is seen on Huangsha Seafood Market in Guangzhou, Guandong Province, China, 22 January 2018. Tsukiji Market of China or Huangsha Seafood Market is biggest one in Southern China and one of the biggest in China, as there are literally hundreds of different varieties of fish and seafood scattered throughout the market. (Photo by Aleksandar Plavevski/EPA/EFE)