A woman wades through a flooded village in the eastern state of Bihar, India August 22, 2017. (Photo by Cathal McNaughton/Reuters)

People watch an eruption of the South East volcano of Etna is seen from the village of Nicolosi, Italy February 10, 2022. (Photo by Antonio Parrinello/Reuters)

A villager dries chillies on September 1, 2020 in Bijie, Guizhou Province of China. (Photo by VCG/VCG via Getty Images)

A child covered in mud on Lake Chokrak near the village of Kurortnoye, Leninsky District of Crimea in Russia on July 4, 2019. (Photo by Sergei Malgavko/TASS)

A seal infront of a passing cruise ship on the shore between Sandhaven village and Fraserburgh in Scotland in August 2023. (Photo by Mark Grant/Caters News Agency)

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 rides a donkey during a donkey race in Roum village, Jizeen countryside, southern Lebanon, August 9, 2015. (Photo by Ali Hashisho/Reuters)

The 2016 Greenwich Village Halloween parade, October 31, 2016 in the Manhattan borough of New York City. (Photo by Anthony Causi)