“Old Mursi woman”. Old woman by the huts of her village. Location: Marenke, Omo valley, Ethiopia. (Photo and caption by Jorge Fernandez/National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest)

ATTENTION! All pictures are presented in high resolution. To see Hi-Res images – just TWICE click on any picture. In other words, click small picture – opens the BIG picture. Click BIG picture – opens VERY BIG picture.

Jaida Zuniga #5 returns a volley against Northview during a girls volleyball match on grass as part of the newly formed Grass Valley League at Northview High School in West Covina on Thursday, March 4, 2021. South Hills defeated Northview (21-25), 25-13, 25-9, 25-12. (Photo by Keith Birmingham, Pasadena Star-News/SCNG)

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)

People take pictures and Buddhist monk chants as a groom and a bride lay inside a pink coffin during their wedding ceremony at Wat Takien temple in Nonthaburi province, on the outskirts of Bangkok February 14, 2015. Ten Thai couples laid in the pink coffin starting 9:09 AM on Saturday during the wedding ceremony organised by the Buddhist temple on Valentine's Day. Couples believe laying briefly in the coffin will get rid of bad luck and usher happiness into their lives. (Photo by Damir Sagolj/Reuters)

A young girl dressed as living goddess Kumari drinks juice as she waits for Kumari Puja, a worship ritual at Hanuman Dhoka, Basantapur Durbar Square, Kathmandu, Nepal, Wednesday, September 27, 2023. Girls under the age of nine gathered for the tradition of worshiping young prepubescent girls as manifestations of the divine female energy. The ritual holds a strong religious significance in the Newar community that seeks divine blessings to save small girls from diseases and bad luck in the years to come. (Photo by Niranjan Shrestha/AP Photo)

Birds congregate by the ocean at sunrise, after California’s governor said he would impose some of the nation’s strictest stay-at-home orders in the coming days, as the global outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues, in Santa Monica, California, U.S., December 4, 2020. (Photo by Lucy Nicholson/Reuters)

A newly hatched chick cuddles up to its mother at Santee Lakes near San Diego, California in May 2023. (Photo by Tammy Kokjohn/Solent News)

A guard stands at Dityatki checkpoint, marking a 30 km (18-mile) zone around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant April 23, 2013. Ukraine will mark the 27th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, the world's worst civil nuclear accident, on April 26. (Photo by Gleb Garanich/Reuters)