A woman holds a placard that reads, “I am Charlie”, during a vigil to pay tribute to the victims of a shooting by gunmen at the offices of weekly satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris, at Trafalgar Square in London January 7, 2015. (Photo by Stefan Wermuth/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 Palestinian protester uses a sling shot to throw stones towards Israeli security forces during clashes on the Israeli border Eastern Gaza City, Friday, November 6, 2015. (Photo by Adel Hana/AP Photo)

A woman photographs a Norwegian spruce Christmas tree from Oslo after it was lit at Trafalgar Square in central London, December 4, 2014. (Photo by Toby Melville/Reuters)

Transgender Kendra Ferrari, 21, performs during Miss Night Queen beauty contest in Guatemala City, Friday, June 15, 2012. Ferrari won the pageant and will represent the transgender community for one year. (Photo by Rodrigo Abd/AP Photo)

“The 2008 Sichuan earthquake or the Great Sichuan Earthquake was a deadly earthquake that measured at 8.0 Ms and 7.9 Mw occurred at 14:28:01 CST (06:28 UTC) on Monday, May 12, 2008 in Sichuan province of China, killing an estimated 68,000 people”. – Wikipedia

Photo: A woman cries as she cannot find her 4-year-old daughter and husband on the top of the ruins of a destroyed school in earthquake-hit Beichuan county, Sichuan province, May 17, 2008. (Photo by Jason Lee/Reuters)

A Nepalese boy gets ready to perform a stick dance during a rally held to pay tribute to the victims of an earthquake, in Bhaktapur, Nepal, Wednesday, September 2, 2015. Two powerful earthquakes in April and May devastated the Himalayan nation killing more than 8,800 people. (Photo by Niranjan Shrestha/AP Photo)

An Israeli woman scrambles through the mud and under barbed wire at the competition of the Legion Run in the Menara Cliffs area of Kiryat Shmona, in northern Israel, near the Lebanon border 14 October 2016. Hundreds of participants ran five kilometers cross country in steep terrain and then navigated various obstacle courses including steep inclines and mud holes. It is the first time this non-competitive but supportive sporting event is held in Israel. (Photo by Jim Hollander/EPA)