Fashionistas wait for the start of Johannesburg Fashion Week 2023 in Johannesburg, South Africa, Wednesday, November 8, 2023. (Photo by Jerome Delay/AP Photo)

A man applies colored powder on his friend's face during celebrations marking Holi, the Hindu festival of colors, in Mumbai, India, Tuesday, March 7, 2023. The festival heralds the arrival of spring. (Photo by Rajanish Kakade/AP Photo)

A giant new exhibition space created by famed graffiti artist Banksy opens to the public on May 3, 2008 in London, England. The disused tunnel beneath Waterloo station has been transformed by 30 artists from around the world. The three day event, tagged as the “Cans festival”, also invites the public to add their own stencil art. (Photo by Jim Dyson/Getty Images)

Floating on clear deep water and reflections near the cave entrance. Visitors can either bring their own kayaks or rent boats from the local community to paddle deep inside the cave and marvel at its wonders on March 2015 at Tham Khoun Ex, Laos. Tham Khoun Xe, commonly known as the Xe Bang Fai River Cave, in Laos, has over 15km of passages filled with awe-inspiring views and wide expanses of water. Photographer, John Spies, 59, captured scenes from the entrances of the huge underground river passages, intricate cave formations and views from a passage high above the water. The cave is formed by the Xe Bang Fai river, a major tributary of the Mekong and in the dry season can be traversed using inflatable kayaks. (Photo by John Spies/Barcroft Media/ABACAPress)

Drag queen Courtney Act (real name Shane Jenek) attends the Celebrity Big Brother male contestants launch night at Elstree Studios on January 5, 2018 in Borehamwood, England. The drag queen was left over-exposed on last show after her outfit apparently fell off. (Photo by Mike Marsland/WireImage)

Women wearing kimono and protective masks make their way to Coming of Age Day celebration ceremony, amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, in Tokyo, Japan, January 10, 2022. (Photo by Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters)

Sofia Evangelia Malkogeorgou and Evangelia Platanioti of Greece perform in the duet technical routine of the artistic swimming event during the Paris 2024 Olympic Games at the Aquatics Centre in Saint-Denis, north of Paris, on August 9, 2024. (Photo by Gonzalo Fuentes/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)