Actress Boquita Almonte smashes an old cell phone on “Good Riddance Day” in Times Square in New York December 28, 2014. Good Riddance Day, inspired by Latin American tradition, encourages people to shred and smash their bad memories from 2014 to start the new year fresh. (Photo by Carlo Allegri/Reuters)

Female sea lion “Sarasa” holds a hose with her mouse to help a trainer clean her room at the Shinagawa Aqua Stadium aquarium in Tokyo on December 30, 2014. The aquarium is carrying out year-end general cleaning of their facilities. (Photo by Yoshikazu Tsuno/AFP Photo)

A girl plays with coloured chicks for sale prior to Easter celebrations in Byblos, Lebanon on March 22, 2015. (Photo by Jamal Saidi/Reuters)

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)

Revelers throw colored corn starch into the air as they celebrate the 2015 Holi (Festival of Colors) at the Krishna Temple in Spanish Fork, Utah on Saturday, March 28, 2015. (Photo by Rick Bowmer/AP Photo)

A man takes a picture of models as they pose next to Cosmis Racing Wheels products during the 2016 Moscow International Auto Salon in Moscow, Russia, August 26, 2016. (Photo by Sergei Karpukhin/Reuters)

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)

Ratko Mladic makes his first appearance at the International Criminal Tribunal on June 3, 2011 in The Hague, Netherlands. Ex-Bosnian Serb army leader Ratko Mladic will make his first appearance at The Hague war crimes tribunal after being declared fit to stand trial. Mladic was arrested a week ago after going into hiding for the past 16 years and is charged with atrocities committed during the Bosnian war. (Photo Serge Ligtenberg/Getty Images )