People walk to the Venezuela Aid Live concert that will play on the Colombian side of the border near the Simon Bolivar International Bridge, from San Antonio del Tachira, Venezuela, Friday, February 22, 2019. (Photo by Rodrigo Abd/AP Photo)

A demonstrator is detained by police officers during clashes in downtown Barcelona, Spain, Friday, October 30, 2020. Clashes have erupted in a central Barcelona square between anti-riot police and hundreds who had gathered to protest the mandatory closure of bars, restaurants and other businesses in the latest effort to rein in on coronavirus outbreaks. (Photo by Joan Mateu/AP Photo)

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

Online hostess Xianggong (L) and other hostesses check their pictures as they gather around the photographer while taking part in a football-themed photoshoot at a photography studio in Beijing March 4, 2015. In China's online hostessing world, men find virtual company and the women can find riches. Xianggong is one of more than 10,000 hostesses on the internet site bobo.com, a live broadcasting web platform where anyone can record themselves singing, playing piano, dancing or just chatting. (Photo by Jason Lee/Reuters)

Women wearing sunglasses pose for a group photo at a park in Beijing in 1980. (Photo by Reuters/China Daily)

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)

Russian opposition leader, Alexei Navalny (C), reacts as the court delivers the verdict in his trial, in the city of Kirov, Russia, 18 July 2013. Alexei Navalny was sentenced to five years in jail for theft on Thursday, an unexpectedly tough punishment which supporters said proved President Vladimir Putin was a dictator ruling by repression. (Photo by Valentina Svistunova/EPA)

Sinabung mount spews ash to the air during an eruption near from Karo, North Sumatra on January 7, 2014. An Indonesian volcano that has erupted relentlessly for months shot volcanic ash into the air 30 times on January 4, forcing further evacuations with more than 20,000 people now displaced, an official said. (Photo by Sutanta Aditya/AFP Photo)