A Polisario fighter sits on a rock at a forward base on the outskirts of Tifariti, Western Sahara, September 9, 2016. At a rocky outpost in Western Sahara, a new generation of soldiers who have never known war are mobilising as tensions resurface in one of Africa's oldest disputes after a quarter century of uneasy peace. (Photo by Zohra Bensemra/Reuters)

A handout picture provided by the Vatican Media shows Pope Francis holding a flag of Ukraine that was sent to him from the Ukrainian town of Bucha during the weekly general audience in the Paul VI Audience Hall, in Vatican City, 06 April 2022. The pontiff lamented the “massacre of Bucha”, in the Kyiv suburb where dozens of bodies in civilian clothing have been found, and renewed his calls for an end to the war in Ukraine. (Photo by Vatican Media Handout/EPA/EFE)

A recently hatched baby Egret bird seen in a nest at the Gatorland Bird Rookery in Kissimmee, Florida on March 17, 2022. Gatorland is known as The Alligator Capital of the World and has a 10 acre natural bird rookery. (Photo by Ronen Tivony/SOPA Images/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

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 jaguar ambushes a giant jacare caiman high up on the Three Brothers River in the Pantanal in Mato Grosso, Brazil. The cat wrestled with the reptile for over twenty minutes in a death struggle witnessed by photographer Chris Brunskill just after ten o'clock in the morning on the 26th of September, 2017. Caimans form a large part of the jaguar's diet in the Pantanal but battles such as this are very rarely observed and seldom photographed. (Photo by Chris Brunskill Ltd/Getty Images)

A female hippopotamus named “Mali”, which means Jasmine, eats fruits arranged to look like a cake during her 50th birthday celebration at Dusit Zoo in Bangkok, Thailand September 23, 2016. (Photo by Chaiwat Subprasom/Reuters)

A heat-stressed koala waits as a resident pours water on its back on December 19, 2015 in Adelaide, Australia. Adelaide is experiencing an extreme heatwave, with temperatures reaching over 40 degrees for five consecutive days. (Photo by Morne de Klerk/Getty Images)

In this undated photo released by Indonesian Ministry of Environment and Forestry, a newly born Sumatran rhino calf walks in its enclosure at Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary at Way Kambas National Park, Indonesia. The critically endangered Sumatran rhino was born on Sumatra Island Saturday, November 25, 2023, the second Sumatran rhino born in the country this year and a welcome addition to a species that currently numbers fewer than 50 animals. (Photo by Indonesian Ministry of Environment and Forestry via AP Photo)