English singer and songwriter Dua Lipa photographs herself as an “Albanian girl in Albania” in the second decade of August 2022. (Photo by dualipa/Instagram)

A young girl works at a construction site in Patiala district, Rajpura, India on November 20, 2019. (Photo by Saqib Majeed/Barcroft Media)

A girl smiles during the celebration of Holi at the Art Department of the University of Dhaka in Dhaka, Bangladesh on March 8, 2023. (Photo by Mohammad Ponir Hossain/Reuters)

Bad Christmas gift makes the pretty girl look disappointed in x-mas time under the christmas tree. (Photo by pixelrain/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

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)

“The girl behind the camera and the girl in front of the camera”, May 2012. (Photo by: Mandy Rosen; Source: Flickr)

Girls ride on a donkey cart with grass for animals on the outside of Nangarhar province, Afghanistan May 19, 2015. (Photo by Reuters/Parwiz)

An Afghan girl harvests Cotton buds at a field on the outskirts of Balkh province, Afghanistan, November 15, 2014. (Photo by Sayed Mustafa/EPA)