Runners dressed in Christmas-themed outfits compete during a charity Santa run in Shanghai, China, November 29, 2015. (Photo by Aly Song/Reuters)

Participants run through the streets of the Back Bay during the 16th annual Santa Speedo Run in Boston, Massachusetts, December 12, 2015. (Photo by Brian Snyder/Reuters)

Clay "caganers" representing Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy (2nd L), Podemos's candidate Pablo Iglesias (R), Socialist Party (PSOE) leader Pedro Sanchez (2nd R) and Ciudadanos party leader Albert Rivera (L) are seen on display at the Santa Llucia Christmas market in central Barcelona, Spain, December 16, 2015. Catalans hide “caganers” or defecators, in Christmas Nativity scenes to let friends hunt for them during Christmas celebrations. The “caganers”, which symbolise defecation and fertilization of the earth, are believed to bring prosperity and luck for the coming year. (Photo by Albert Gea/Reuters)

Fireworks light up the London skyline and Big Ben just after midnight on January 1, 2012 in London, England. Thousands of people lined the banks of the River Thames in central London to see in the New Year with a spectacular fireworks display. (Photo by Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

Crowds Gather For New Year's Ball Drop In Times Square on December 31, 2011 in New York City. (Photo by Michael Loccisano/Getty Images)

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)

Farmhand Beatrice Jasiewicz (L) looks on as a colleague carries an injured goose on an open field at the Oekohof Kuhhorst organic farm near Berlin on November 24, 2011 in Kuhhorst, Germany. Goose is the traditional Christmas Eve dinner in Germany. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)