“What did I know about Chechnya before last week? For someone who grew up in the 1990s the very word Chechnya meant a string of grainy images on TV showing people in battered camouflage outfits, shooting at each other amid destruction and ruin. Fear, wahhabis, Shamil Basayev, terrorism, mountains: these were the words that used to spring to my mind when someone mentioned Chechnya”. – Maxim Shemetov. Photo: Special forces officers stand guard during a government-organised event marking Chechen language day in the centre of the Chechen capital Grozny April 25, 2013. (Photo by Maxim Shemetov/Reuters)

s*x workers, wearing decorative skull masks, march through the streets in downtown Mexico City, Friday, October 28, 2016. The women march with candles to an altar dedicated to their departed colleagues, many who died violently at the hands of their customers. This annual procession, tied to the Day of the Dead festivities, has taken place for more than 20 years. (Photo by Eduardo Verdugo/AP Photo)

Apollo 9 Command/Service Modules (CSM) nicknamed “Gumdrop” and Lunar Module (LM), nicknamed “Spider” are shown docked together as Command Module pilot David R. Scott stands in the open hatch. Astronaut Russell L. Schweickart, Lunar Module pilot, took this photograph of Scott during his EVA as he stood on the porch outside the Lunar Module. Apollo 9 was an Earth orbital mission designed to test docking procedures between the CSM and LM as well as test fly the Lunar Module in the relative safe confines of Earth orbit. (Photo by NASA)

A girl walks past campaign posters for long-time President Yoweri Museveni, as well as for local members of Parliament, on a street in Kampala, Uganda Wednesday, February 17, 2016. On the eve of presidential elections, a heavy police and military presence could be seen in the capital Kampala. (Photo by Ben Curtis/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)

A stuntman performs in a car at the “Well of Death” at an exhibition in Srinagar, India, Friday, May 23, 2014. In the Well of Death, stunt drivers on motorbikes and cars drive in circles around the vertical walls of the well-shaped construction. (Photo by Dar Yasin/AP Photo)

These two young siblings appear to cling on to a tree for dear life and even hold hands as they learn the ropes of climbing, on June 25, 2013. (Photo by Tim Fitzharris/Minden/Solent)

Hundreds of Nigerians celebrate at an intersection in the flashpoint northern city of Kaduna on March 31, 2015 the victory of main opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate Mohammadu Buhari. (Photo by Nichole Sobecki/AFP Photo)