A police officer chases shoppers to clear the streets of the Red Light market on the first day of lockdown to stop the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Monrovia, Liberia on April 11, 2020. (Photo by Derick Snyder/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 returns home carrying vegetable on her back (foreground) while other farmer works on vegetable field (background) during the 43rd day of the lockdown imposed by the government as a preventive measure against the spread of COVID-19 coronavirus, in Kathmandu, Nepal on Tuesday, May 5, 2020. (Photo by Rojan Shrestha/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Police detain a woman protesting against the court verdict for Yuliy Boyarshinov, and Viktor Filinkov, members of a left-wing group Set (Network) at the Western regional military court in St.Petersburg, Russia, Monday, June 22, 2020. A Russian military court convicted two members of a left-wing youth group of terrorism Monday and sentenced them to prison terms of five and a half and seven years, in a case that human rights groups called fabricated and based on coerced testimony. (Photo by Dmitri Lovetsky/AP Photo)

A woman from the Turkana tribe waits at a shop at the village of Lorengippi near the town of Lodwar, Turkana county, Kenya, July 3, 2020. (Photo by Baz Ratner/Reuters)

An armed police officer attends an explosive ordnance disposal training on April 12, 2022 in Nanning, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region of China. (Photo by Yu Haiyang/VCG via Getty Images)

These friends enjoying a night out in the West Yorkshire city beamed for the cameras as they waved Union flags during the Queen Elizabeth II's platinum jubilee celebrations on June 4, 2022. (Photo by Nb press ltd)

Partygoers in United Kingdom flocked to bars and clubs across the nation on Friday as they drunk in the 34C scorcher. Revellers were pictured in Leeds on June 17, 2022 necking drinks and going wild as the sun set on the hottest day of the year so far. (Photo by Nb press ltd)