Students with torches protest against the alleged encroachment of Nepal border by India in far west of Nepal, during the 49th day of a lockdown imposed by the government amid concerns about the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Kathmandu, Nepal on May 11, 2020. (Photo by Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters)

A cemetery worker dig new graves at the Xico cemetery on the outskirts of Mexico City, as the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak continues in Mexico, June 10, 2020. (Photo by Edgard Garrido/Reuters)

Two three-month-old female white Bengal tiger cubs play with a zoo keeper in their enclosure at the Buenos Aires' Zoo, in Argentina, on April 17, 2014. Captive white Bengal tiger Cloe, gave birth to three cubs – two females and one male – on January 14, 2014. (Photo by Juan Mabromata/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)

In this photograph taken on April 16, 2014, a veterinary staff member of the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme center conducts medical examinations on a 14-year-old male orangutan found with air gun metal pellets embedded in his body in Sibolangit district in northern Sumatra island. (Photo by Sutanta Aditya/AFP Photo)

Coca growers chew coca leaves during a celebration for the reincorporation of Bolivia to the UN Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs in La Paz on January 14, 2013. “The coca leaf is not any more seen as cocaine (...), it is a victory of our identity” said Bolivian President Evo Morales. (Photo by Jorge Bernal/AFP Photo)

A demonstrator is detained by riot police during a protest, in La Paz, Bolivia on November 21, 2019. Bolivia's interim President Jeanine Anez asked Congress Wednesday to approve a law that would allow for new elections, after deadly unrest following the resignation of Evo Morales and the disputed October 20 ballot. (Photo by Marco Bello/Reuters)

A Ukrainian soldier smiles in front of a city sign reading ''I Love Izium'' in Izium, Kharkiv region, Ukraine, Tuesday, September 14, 2022. Ukrainian troops piled pressure on retreating Russian forces pressing deeper into occupied territory and sending more Kremlin troops fleeing ahead of the counteroffensive that has inflicted a stunning blow on Moscow's military prestige. (Photo by Kostiantyn Liberov/AP Photo)