A man runs after he tried to put himself on fire during a protest at a makeshift camp at the Greek-Macedonian border near the village of Idomeni on March 22, 2016. Greece will not be able to start sending refugees back to Turkey from March 20, 2016, the government said, as the country struggles to implement a key deal aimed at easing Europe's migrant crisis. The numbers are daunting: officials said as of Saturday there were 47,500 migrants in Greece, including 8,200 on the islands and 10,500 massed at the Idomeni camp on the Macedonian border. (Photo by Andrej Isakovic/AFP Photo)

A 14 year-old Myanmar girl carries three bags of powdered-limestone to load in to a boat on the bank of Ayeyarwaddy River, on International Women's Day in Mandalay, Myanmar, Tuesday, March 8, 2016. Migrant workers living along Ayeyarwaddy riverbank earn bout 5000 Kyats (US Dollar 4) a day for loading and unloading goods. (Photro by Hkun Lat/AP Photo)

In this aerial view Haitian migrants queue to receive food at a shelter in Ciudad Acuna, Coahuila State, Mexico, on September 23, 2021. At least 50 police vehicles carrying more than a hundred agents are blocking the border crossing at the river that separates the Mexican city of Ciudad Acuña from the United States, AFP reported. (Photo by Pedro Pardo/AFP Photo)

Venezuelan Hildemaro Ortiz relaxes inside of an abandoned bus in the border city of Pacaraima, Brazil on April 13, 2019. Ten destitute Venezuelan migrants who fled their country's crisis did not get far when they crossed into Brazil: they have been living for three months on an abandoned bus just across the border. (Photo by Pilar Olivares/Reuters)

Young people play with foam during a march to commemorate Youth Day in Caracas, Venezuela, 12 February 2025. The president of Venezuela's National Assembly (AN, Parliament), Chavista Jorge Rodriguez, invited, before hundreds of followers who commemorated Youth Day, all young migrants to return to the country so that they can “build a prosperous homeland”. (Photo by Ronald Pena R./EPA)

Migrants try to board an overcrowded train as they leave the city at the Jammu Tawi railway station in Jammu on May 10, 2025, amid the ongoing border tensions between India and Pakistan after the Kashmir tourist attack. Pakistan and India on May 10 stepped up missile, drone and artillery attacks in a fourth straight day of conflict, as the US urged both sides to restore dialogue to “avoid miscalculation”. (Photo by Money Sharma/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)