An ambulance with emergency lights on makes its way through snowfall in Iowa, US on December 21, 2022. (Photo by Joseph Cress/AP Photo)

Panda keepers hold cubs while posing for photos ahead of the new year at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in Chengdu, China's southwestern Sichuan province on December 29, 2022. (Photo by AFP Photo/China Stringer Network)

Melissa Foley clears debris and helps in her neighborhood as the San Lorenzo River rises with emergency evacuation orders in Felton Grove, California, U.S., January 14, 2023. (Photo by David Swanson/Reuters)

A fellow officer comes to the aid of injured patrolman C.V. Satt, who was pelted with rocks and beer bottles during a clash between police and relief demonstrators in Denver September 23, 1935. (Photo by Henry G. Eisenhand/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)

Ramoncito Campo kisses his wife Hernelie Ruazol Campo on a flooded street during a southwest monsoon that battered Manila August 8, 2012. The newly-wed couple pushed through with their scheduled wedding despite severe flooding that inundated wide areas of the capital and nearby nine provinces. (Photo by Reuters/Courtesy of Ramoncito Campo)

This little kingfisher clearly didn't read the sign when it landed itself a minnow in a no fishing zone. Taxi driver Paul Bird, 52, from Newmarket, Suffolk, UK, captured this amusing moment whilst out looking to photograph kingfishers in Norfolk, an hour drive from his home. Paul explained: “There are a total of six perches the bird was using from which to fish, one of them being the No Fishing sign”. (Photo by Paul Bird/Solent News & Photo Agency)

Daniel Cheong, a dog behaviorist and trainer, steps over a leash as he walks a pack of dogs in Arlington, Va. on November 13, 2018. (Photo by Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)