Melanie Chisholm, Emma Bunton, Melanie Brown and Geri Horner of the Spice Girls in concert at Wembley Stadium in London on Sunday, June 16, 2019. (Photo by Andrew Timms/PA Wire)

A Flame Skimmer or Firecracker Skimmer dragonfly (Libellula saturata) rests on a small branch in Topanga, California, USA, 18 June 2018. The Flame Skimmer dragonfly is found in the Western United States near ponds and creeks. (Photo by Mike Nelson/EPA/EFE)

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 Chinese girl peeps at Santa at a shopping center on Christmas Eve December 24, 2011 in Beijing, China. Though Christmas is not officially celebrated in China, the holiday is becoming increasingly popular as Chinese adopt more Western ideas and festivals. (Photo by Feng Li/Getty Images)

Pakistan girls make selfies holding a Pakistan-made weapon displayed at the four-day International Defence Exhibition and Seminar (IDEAS) 2016 in Karachi, Pakistan, Wednesday, November 23, 2016. (Photo by Shakil Adil/AP Photo)

A girl carries a bag of recyclable items she collected from a landfill on the outskirts of Sanaa, Yemen November 16, 2016. (Photo by Mohamed al-Sayaghi/Reuters)

An Iraqi girl, who fled from Falluja because of Islamic State violence, poses for a photographer at a refugee camp in Ameriyat Falluja, south of Falluja, Iraq, June 16, 2016. (Photo by Ahmed Saad/Reuters)