Mayu adjusts Koiku’s kimono, as Koiku wears a protective face mask while posing for a photograph, before they work at a party where they will entertain with other geisha at Japanese luxury restaurant Asada in Tokyo, Japan, June 23, 2020. (Photo by Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters)

Aerial view of the “Viracocha III”, a boat made only from the totora reed, as it is being prepared to cross the Pacific from Chile to Australia on an expected six-month journey, La Paz, Bolivia, October 19, 2016. An expedition in a boat made only of reeds crafted by indigenous Bolivians is getting ready to cross the Pacific from South America to Australia, in a fresh attempt to prove that ancient mariners were capable of making the journey. (Photo by David Mercado/Reuters)

The first jaguar litter since 1975 was born at the Milwaukee County Zoo to Stella and Pat on November 13, 2013. The litter was on public display for the first time on March 13 when the jaguar baby's names were released. Belize schoolchildren named one Zean, which is the end of Belizean, and a public contest named the other B'alam, which means "great and powerful king" in Mayan. Photo: Stella the mother and her cub Zean rest together at The Milwaukee County Zoo. (Photo by Rick Wood)

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)

Garbage pickers collect ride on donkey cart while looking for recyclable materials at a rubbish dump in the outskirts of Baghdad, Iraq, August 23, 2016. Despite its huge untapped oil and gas reserves and steadily rising oil output and revenue, 23 percent of the population live below the poverty line, according to the Ministry of Planning. (Photo by Khalid al Mousily/Reuters)