A Sri Lankan leopard is pictured at a zoo in Dehiwala near Colombo on March 3, 2016, on World Wildlife Day. (Photo by Ishara S. Kodikara/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)

In this photo submitted by the Washington Post tilted “The Moment Time Stopped”, survivors piled bodies of the dead outside for weeks after earthquake on January 14, 2010 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck in 2010, and the Haitian government has said more than 300,000 people were killed. The exact toll is unknown because there was no systematic effort to count bodies among the chaos and destruction. (Photo by Carol Guzy/AP Photo/The Washington Post)

Ladies enjoyed themselves last night – while keeping safe with their face masks on in Liverpool, United Kingdom on Saturday, December 5, 2020, after coronavirus restrictions were eased following the end of the second national lockdown. (Photo by London News Pictures)

People attend in costume the 2022 New York Comic Con, at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in Manhattan in New York City, New York, U.S., October 6, 2022. (Photo by Brendan McDermid/Reuters)

People try to get a roast chicken at the first Costco outlet in China, on the stores opening day in Shanghai on August 27, 2019. China has proved a brutal battleground for overseas food retailers in recent years, with many failing to understand consumer habits and tastes as well as local competitors building a stronger presence. (Photo by Hector Retamal/AFP Photo)

“Shortly after he arrived, Van Agtmael witnessed the aftermath of this suicide bombing at a cafe that soldiers frequented in Mosul. Nine people died and 23 were wounded”. (Photo and caption by Van Agtmael/Harrison Jacobs/Magnum Photos)

“Asaro from the Eastern Highlands”. The mudmen could not cover their faces with mud because the people of Papua New Guinea thought that the mud from the Asaro river was poisonous. So instead of covering their faces with this alleged poison, they made masks from pebbles that they heated and water from the waterfall, with unusual designs such as long or very short ears either going down to the chin or sticking up at the top, long joined eyebrows attached to the top of the ears, horns and sideways mouths. (Photo and caption by Jimmy Nelson)