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 line of soldiers firing handguns during a training session, circa 1920. (Photo by Keystone). P.S. All pictures are presented in high resolution.

Paramilitary policemen take part in a training in Chaohu, Anhui province, China December 28, 2015. (Photo by Reuters/China Daily)

Although October Jones is technically an illustrator, we think he needs to consider switching his full-time job to “daily commute doodler.” Almost every day during his train commute, he creates little drawings, inspired by the people around him on the train.

A U.S. Marine leads training on a shooting range in France in an undated photo taken during the First World War. (Photo by Reuters/Courtesy Library of Congress)

Paramilitary policemen take part in a summer training in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, China, June 27, 2016. (Photo by Reuters/China Daily)

Employees work on an electric train assembly line at the “Stadler Minsk” plant in Fanipol, Belarus February 10, 2016. (Photo by Vasily Fedosenko/Reuters)

In a photo taken on October 7, 2020 a woman holds two dogs as she waits for a train in Suncheon. (Photo by Ed Jones/AFP Photo)