Hindu devotees, their bodies pierced with lemon and paladai, or bowl with a spout mainly used to feed milk to infants, wait to participate in a procession to mark Shivratri, or the night of Shiva, in Chennai, India, Wednesday, February 18, 2015. Such processions are held as an offering and show of devotion by devotees on the day dedicated to the worship of Lord Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction. (Photo by Arun Sankar K./AP Photo)

Cheng Chen (R), a 27-year-old worker at a state-owned enterprise, poses for a photograph with his nephew who is wearing his home-made Iron Man armour, in Xuzhou, Jiangsu province April 13, 2015. It cost Cheng about 500 yuan ($81 USD) to make the armour, which weighs about 4 kilograms, with plastic boards and LED lights, local media reported. (Photo by Reuters/Stringer)

A Snowboarder participates in a waterslide contest, which consists of gliding over a water pool embedded in snow, during the closing event of the ski resort of Nendaz, southwestern Switzerland, Monday, April 21, 2014. (Photo by Maxime Schmid/AP Photo/Keystone)

A picture made available on 21 July 2016 shows a visitor having a meal from a toilet bowl at “Jamban Cafe” (lit. Toilet Cafe) in Semarang, Central Java, Indonesia, 16 July 2016. The cafe was created by a sanitation expert for education purposes to stress the importance of using a dedicated toilet and keeping it clean to prevent disease. (Photo by EPA/Purwanto)

A worker stack bricks on his head at a brick factory in Lalitpur January 12, 2015. (Photo by Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters)

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)

“Jallikattu is a bull taming sport played in Tamil Nadu as a part of Pongal celebrations on Mattu Pongal day. Annually, jallikattu is held from January to July, played first in world-famous Palamedu, near Madurai on January 15 followed by “Alanganallur-jallikattu” in Alanganallur, near Madurai on 16 January. There is a specific breed of cattle bred for this purpose known as Jellicut and from the place of a big breeder Pulikulam”. – Wikipedia. Photo: Bull tamers try to control a bull during the bull-taming sport called Jallikattu, in Palamedu, about 575 kilometers (359 miles) south of Chennai, India, Tuesday, January 15, 2013. (Photo by Arun Sankar K./AP Photo)

Actor George Clooney from the film “Ides Of March” arrives at the Hotel Excelsior during the 68th Venice Film Festival on August 31, 2011 in Venice, Italy. (Photo by Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images)