A Nepalese Gurung community woman, wearing traditional attire, prepares to participate in a parade to mark their New Year known as “Tamu Loshar” in Kathmandu, Nepal, Friday, December 30, 2016. The indigenous Gurungs, also known as Tamu, are celebrating the advent of the year of the bird. (Photo by Niranjan Shrestha/AP Photo)

A storm whips through a tented area occupied by Nepalese earthquake survivors as a mother grabs her infant child and runs to find shelter in Kathmandu, Nepal 23 May 2015. Nepalese, who lost their homes in earthquake and fear aftershocks, have been living in temporary shelter in open ground which they had to flee because of the heavy rain and powerful wind. (Photo by Narendra Shrestha/EPA)

Participants take part in the annual Great Spitalfields Pancake Race in aid of London's Air Ambulance in London, Britain February 9, 2016. (Photo by Stefan Wermuth/Reuters)

American rapper Megan Thee Stallion accepts the best female hip hop artist award at the BET Awards on Sunday, June 27, 2021, at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/AP Photo)

Filipino boys play basketball at an improvised court hooked on multi-layered tombs at a public cemetery in Navotas, north of Manila, Philippines on Thursday Oct. 31, 2013. Filipinos are expected to flock to cemeteries on November 1 to remember their dead as they observe All Saints Day in this predominantly Roman Catholic country. (Photo by Aaron Favila/AP Photo)

A woman picks marigold flowers used to make garlands and offer prayers, before selling them to the market for the Tihar festival, also called Diwali, in Kathmandu, Nepal on October 17, 2017. (Photo by Navesh Chitrakar/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)

A woman sits as she gets a tattoo on her leg during the annual Panama City Ink Fest in Panama City August 16, 2015. (Photo by Carlos Jasso/Reuters)