U.S. Army soldiers with the 1st Battalion, 501st Infantry Regiment deployed to Combat Outpost Sabari, Afghanistan scan their area as they begin a multi-day air assault mission near the Pakistani border of eastern Afghanistan's Khost province May 2, 2012. (Photo by Staff Sgt. Joshua L. DeMotts/U.S. Air Force)

In northwest Russia, in a small village called Alekhovshchina, Nadia Sablin's aunts spend the warmer months together in the family home and live as the family has always lived, chopping wood to heat the house and making their own clothes. Sablin's book of photographs, “Aunties: The Seven Summers of Alevtina and Ludmila”, is published by Duke University Press. Here: “Two-Handed Saw, 2014”. (Photo by Nadia Sablin)

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)

National Guardsmen are put through riot training in Boston's Commonwealth Armory on Friday, October 18, 1974. Massachusetts Gov. Francis W. Sargent called up the guard to quell school violence, but the city has been relatively calm and the guard has remained in the armories. (Photo by JWG/AP Photo)

Ellesse Janda welcomes a spring rainbow at Cresswell in Northumberland, United Kingdom on March 17, 2023. (Photo by Ian Sproat/Picture Exclusive)

These are the stunning pictures of the night sky brilliantly capturing the lights and colors of the Milky Way glistening over desert landscapes. Taken in various locations across Australia and the United States from the Grand Canyon to the Coral Sea, the pictures perfectly show the bright lights of the starry skies. Here: Bisit Badlands, New Mexico. (Photo by Wayne Pinkston/Caters News)

Thor, Virginia Tech College of Engineering, Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory, tries to connect the hose to a firehose connection during the hose task at the Homestead-Miami Speedway, Friday, December 20, 2013, in Homestead, Fla. (Photo by Alan Diaz/AP Photo)

Stranded cars remain in a flooded street during an intense rainstorm in Havana, on April 29, 2015. Two people were killed, three buildings collapsed and another 24 suffered some kind of damage due to the heavy rain that affected several sectors of Havana Wednesday. (Photo by Yamil Lage/AFP Photo)