The Photographers 2015 runs from 25 November to 23 December at Osborne Samuel and Beetles+Huxley, London. Here: Untitled, 1950, by Bert Hardy. (Photo by Bert Hardy/Beetles+Huxley & Osborne Samuel)

A participant rests while people take part in the Mermaid Parade at Coney Island, in Brooklyn, New York, June 20, 2015. The annual parade, founded in 1983, seeks to bring mythology to life for residents, create confidence in the district and to allow artistic self-expression in public, according to the parade's website. (Photo by Eduardo Munoz/Reuters)

Fireworks light the sky over Copacabana beach during New Year's Eve celebrations in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Thursday, January 1, 2016. (Photo by Mauro Pimentel/AP Photo)

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)

Four-year-old Rashida from Kobani, Syria, part of a new group of more than a thousand immigrants, sleeps as they wait at border line of Macedonia and Greece to enter into Macedonia near Gevgelija railway station August 20, 2015. (Photo by Ognen Teofilovski/Reuters)

A shop assistant creates a window display in a Next store in central London December 30, 2014. British clothing retailer Next's sales rose 2.9 percent in the run up to Christmas mostly due to online and catalogue purchases, hitting the upper end of its predictions and it said full-year profit would rise by about 11.5 percent. (Photo by Neil Hall/Reuters)

India's Border Security Force (BSF) “Daredevils” motorcycle riders perform during a rehearsal for the Republic Day parade on a foggy winter morning in New Delhi January 8, 2015. India will celebrate its annual Republic Day on January 26. (Photo by Ahmad Masood/Reuters)

A visitor poses for a photograph in front of a 3D painting depicting a Japanese Imperial army soldier at a 3D art gallery in Beijing January 16, 2015. (Photo by Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters)