A woman carries a piglet as she runs on ice during a running challenge in Changsha, Hunan province February 8, 2015. A total of 20 people participated in the challenge requiring them to choose a pig ranging between 15 kg and 115 kg in weight, and carrying it while running on a 20.15-metre-long ice track. The participants that complete the challenge will be rewarded with the pig they carried, local media reported. (Photo by Darwin Zhou/Reuters)

A model is filmed backstage before the Jeremy Scott Fall/Winter 2015 collection presentation at New York Fashion Week February 18, 2015. (Photo by Andrew Kelly/Reuters)

In this Wednesday, May 23, 2012 photograph, a young deer and a cat share a moment in Feench village near Jodhpur, Rajasthan state, India. (Photo by AP Photo)

People watch as an acrobat rides his motorcycle around a circular track at an entertainment park set up outside a shrine in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, on June 19, 2013. (Photo by Muhammed Muheisen/Associated Press)

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)

A dog sits in the shade of a mangrove tree as a woman uses a fork to dig for shellfish on the reef-mud flats of a lagoon located at South Tarawa in the central Pacific island nation of Kiribati May 23, 2013. Kiribati consists of a chain of 33 atolls and islands that stand just metres above sea level, spread over a huge expanse of otherwise empty ocean. With surrounding sea levels rising, Kiribati President Anote Tong has predicted his country will likely become uninhabitable in 30-60 years because of inundation and contamination of its freshwater supplies. (Photo by David Gray/Reuters)

Miley Cyrus broke onto the scene as “Hannah Montana” in 2006. Since the show ended, she’s been desperate to shed the Disney image, first with “Can’t Be Tamed” in 2010, then with open marijuana use and twerking on Robin Thicke’s crotch in 2013. (Photo by Getty Images)

Shemika Charles limbos under her car at Niagara Falls State Park on May 28, 2015 in Buffalo, New York. A world record holding limbo queen thinks she has become the first person to shimmy under a car. Shemika Charles amazed herself and onlookers when she bent over backwards to get underneath the SUV earlier this week. The supple 22-year-old entered the record books in 2010 when she limboed down to an incredible eight and a half inches – the height of a beer bottle. She trains for up to four hours a day to keep her body in peak condition and now travels around America performing with her family. However, regular performances put an incredible strain on her body and she sees a chiropractor once a week to have her hips realigned. Her mother was also a successful limbo dancer in her home country of Trinidad and Tobago but had to give up due to injury. (Photo by Ruaridh Connellan/Barcroft USA)