In this photo taken on Monday, October 27, 2014, a cactus stands at a broken window in a damaged house after shelling not far from Donetsk airport in the town of Donetsk, eastern Ukraine. Donetsk, which has lost about 400,000 of its 1 million pre-war population, is bracing to a winter ahead. In a climate like eastern Ukraine's, where temperatures typically stay below zero all winter, the damage to the critical infrastructure and lack of effort to provide adequate shelter to people whose homes were destroyed could literally mean a death from the cold. (Photo by Dmitry Lovetsky/AP 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)

Ratko Mladic makes his first appearance at the International Criminal Tribunal on June 3, 2011 in The Hague, Netherlands. Ex-Bosnian Serb army leader Ratko Mladic will make his first appearance at The Hague war crimes tribunal after being declared fit to stand trial. Mladic was arrested a week ago after going into hiding for the past 16 years and is charged with atrocities committed during the Bosnian war. (Photo Serge Ligtenberg/Getty Images )

A design studio has launched its own dogs of war – by cleverly blending iconic Second World War planes with their canine counterparts. Photo: Wellington bomber with Golden Retreiver camoflage. A design studio has launched its own dogs of war – by cleverly blending iconic Second World War planes with their canine counterparts. (Photo by BNPS)

Afghan children play soccer in front of the war-damaged Darul Aman Palace in the suburbs of Kabul, Afghanistan, Wednesday, June 8, 2011. (Photo by Gemunu Amarasinghe/AP Photo)

Afghan women attend a rally to support Afghan security forces and demand peace in the country in Herat, Afghanistan, 08 February 2021. Hamdullah Mohib, Afghanistan's National Security Advisor told a press conference in Kabul on 06 February, the Afghan government was ready for war after successive setbacks in recent weeks to peace talks with the Taliban, who have refused to return to discussions that began in September in Doha. (Photo by Jalil Rezayee/EPA/EFE)

“One artist doesn’t mind if people class her work as rubbish. Thats because all of her pieces are made out of junk found in charity shops, garage sales and in and around her home. Using the likes of buttons, broken jewelry and toy parts, Jane Perkins, from Exeter, UK, has recreated the famous faces of Albert Einstein, Kate Middleton, The Queen, as well as some of the worlds most iconic paintings and photographs”. – Caters News. Photo: Afghan Girl (based on photograph by Steve McCurry/National Geographic). (Photo by Jane Perkins/Caters News)

A serviceman kisses the main icon for the Russian Armed Forces' main cathedral, delivered at the Church of Our Lady the Healer in Rostov-On-Don, Russia on May 15, 2018. The Russian Armed Forces' main cathedral is to be built in Patriot Military Park in Kubinka outside Moscow by 2020, the year of the 75th anniversary of the victory of the Soviet Red Army over Nazi Germany in the 1941-45 Great Patriotic War, the Eastern Front of World War II. (Photo by Valery Matytsin/TASS)