Revelers celebrate the Indian festival of Holi on a boat cruise around part of Manhattan on March 17, 2012 in New York City. During the Hindu festival of Holi, also known as the Festival of Colors, which marks the arrival of spring, participants throw colored powder and water on one another. Many of the New York participants are Indian-American. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Men dressed as traditional Greek warriors participate in the annual Greek Independence Day Parade on Fifth Avenue on March 25, 2012 in New York City. It was the 191st annual parade which ran from 64th Street to 79th Street on Fifth Avenue and celebrates Greek heritage. (Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images)

“Michael Mathias Prechtl (April 26, 1926, Amberg – March 19, 2003, Nuremberg) was a German artist, illustrator and cartoonist. He served as a soldier on the Eastern Front during World War II and spent 1945-49 as a prisoner of war in the Soviet Union”. – Wikipedia

Photo: “Der Gestiefelte Kater (Puss in Boots)”, 1997. Artwork by Michael Mathias Prechtl

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)

Whole cooked alligators are displayed before being served at the 110th Explorers Club Annual Dinner at the Waldorf Astoria in New York March 15, 2014. The club, which promotes the scientific exploration of land, sea, air and space featured catering by chef and exotic creator Gene Rurka. Chef Rurka prepared a variety of dishes featuring an array of insects, wildlife, animal body parts and invasive species. (Photo by Andrew Kelly/Reuters)

Tourists and journalists stand next to a newly displayed statue of pharaoh Amenhotep III and his wife Tiye (Down) in Egypt's temple city of Luxor on March 23, 2014. Two colossal statues of pharaoh Amenhotep III were unveiled by archaeologists today in their original sites in the funerary temple of the king, on the west bank of the Nile in Luxor, adding to the existing two famous ancient Memnon colossi. (Photo by Khaled Desouki/AFP Photo)

A female soccer player controls a ball during a training session at the Golab Trust Sport Complex in Kabul March 10, 2014. Despite decades of conflict in Afghanistan, and several recent militant attacks, the country's capital Kabul is home to a vibrant youth scene of musicians, artists, athletes and activists. Shopping malls and cafes stand in the city, which is nonetheless beset by infrastructure problems and instability. (Photo by Morteza Nikoubazl/Reuters)

Wolfgang (L), member of World War One historical association “Darstellungsgruppe Suddeutsches Militar 1870-1918” (DSM 18), from Munich, Germany, and Florent, member of French association “Le Poilu de la Marne”, dressed in vintage army uniforms, visit the Bezonvaux bunker in the national forest of Verdun, eastern France, March 29, 2014. Members of French and German historical associations, who gather annually, together visited the battlefield of Verdun in France, the site of a bloody World War One battle that dragged on for around 10 months in 1916, claiming hundreds of thousands of lives and destroying many villages. (Photo by Charles Platiau/Reuters)