The moon illuminates the snow-covered Concordia, the confluence of the Baltoro and Godwin-Austen glaciers, near the world's second highest mountain the K2 (8,000 meters) in the Karakoram mountain range in Pakistan September 6, 2014. While other parts of Pakistan and northern India were flooded, Concordia in the Karakoram mountain range was covered with a seasonally unusual amount of snow. Geographically, Pakistan is a climbers paradise. It rivals Nepal for the number of peaks over 7,000 meters and is home to the world's second tallest mountain, K2, as well as four of the world's 14 summits higher than 8,000 meters. (Photo by Wolfgang Rattay/Reuters)

Rescue workers stand near dead bodies washed ashore in Ton Sai Bay in Thailand's Phi Phi island in this December 28, 2004 file photo. On December 26, 2004, a magnitude 9.15 quake off the coast of Indonesia's Aceh province triggered an Indian Ocean tsunami that killed around 226,000 people in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and nine other countries. (Photo by Luis Enrique Ascui/Reuters)

Children play football in front of an abandoned train compartment next to a railway track in Dhaka, in this May 29, 2014 file photo. (Photo by Andrew Biraj/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)

Young children at a Bristol, Great Britain health centre unsure of the benefits of sun-lamps and the special glasses that must be worn, July 1948. The health centre was part of the newly introduced free National Health Service. (Photo by Popperfoto/Getty Images)

A model, painted by the artist Avi Ram from Airbrush Hero, poses for a photo as part of a calendar project, at the Tower of David in Jerusalem's Old City, April 27, 2017. (Photo by Ronen Zvulun/Reuters)

A Chinese woman wears a mask to protect from particles blown in during a sandstorm as she walks in the street on May 4, 2017 in Beijing, China. Sandstorms are common in northern China during the spring season and are caused when heavy winds from Mongolia in the north brings sand and pollutants that can blanket Chinese cities and cause air quality to deteriorate. (Photo by Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

An Indian nomadic Gujjar girl hangs on to a horse cart after collecting bricks from debris on the outskirts of Jammu, India, Tuesday, March 7, 2017. The Gujjar tribal communities are considered by some to be economically and socially backward and the lack of care by the state government has led to resentment amongst the community. The tribe moves to the plains from the hills to escape the cold winters. (Photo by Channi Anand/AP Photo)