A participant takes part in the High-Heels Race as part of the Pride celebrations, in the Chueca neighbourhood in Madrid on July 7, 2022. MADO (Madrid Pride) is a series of street celebrations that take place during the city's LGBTIQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersеx and queer) Pride week. The Pride parade on July 9 will be the highlight of the week. (Photo by Javier Soriano/AFP 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)

A large Pacific sideband snail slowly crosses a rain wet road in rural Douglas County, Oregon near Elkton on Sunday, December 2, 2012. The moisture loving snail should be very content with the recent heavy rains in southwestern Oregon and northern California. (Photo by Robin Loznak)

Gypsies gather at Appleby in Cumbria, United Kingdom on August 12, 2021, for the biggest horse fair of its kind in Europe, which lasts till Sunday. Typically the fair takes place in June, although COVID has pushed it back to August in 2021. In the region of 30,000 people are expected to attend. (Photo by Chris Strickland/Alamy Live News)

Plebes form a human pyramid to place an upperclassman hat atop the 21-foot vegetable shortening-covered Herndon Monument, a tradition marking the end of their plebe year at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, U.S., May 23, 2022. (Photo by Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

Volunteers distribute water to a woman carrying a child along a street during a hot summer day in Karachi on May 14, 2022. (Photo by Rizwan Tabassum/AFP Photo)

Oakland Athletics left fielder Tony Kemp (5) catches the ball during the first inning against the Miami Marlins at RingCentral Coliseum in Oakland, California on August 22, 2022. (Photo by Stan Szeto/USA TODAY Sports)

Party-loving Brits headed out to enjoy the first weekend of indoor drinking in months; many – like these lasses in Liverpool on May 22, 2021 – were keen to make up for lost time. (Photo by London News Pictures)