A street cleaner demonstrates his martial arts skills in front of a closed shop near Beijing's Tiananmen Square September 2, 2015 as the capital prepares for tomorrow's parade. (Photo by Damir Sagolj/Reuters)

A cosplayer poses for a photograph during the Comic Market 90 (Comiket) event in Tokyo Big Sight on August 12, 2016, Tokyo, Japan. Many manga and anime fans wearing cosplay lined up in the sun for the first day of Comiket. Comiket was established in 1975 and focuses on manga, anime, gaming and cosplay. Organizers expect more than 500,000 visitors to attend this year's summer event which runs for three days until August 14. (Photo by Aflo/Splash News)

Freshmen in Zhengzhou Institute of Aeronautical Industry Management head bottles of mineral water for upright stand during military training on September 17, 2015 in Zhengzhou, Henan Province of China. More than 6,800 freshmen in the school are required to take part in the military training. (Photo by ChinaFotoPress/ChinaFotoPress via Getty Images)

A girl plays on a pile of discarded flowers outside a market, the day after the Diwali celebrations in Mumbai, India October 31, 2016. (Photo by Shailesh Andrade/Reuters)

A child walks to an installation made from fallen leaves by college students, in shape of a sofa, to call for people's attention to environment protection, in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, China, December 6, 2016. (Photo by Reuters/China Daily)

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)

“Camille Lepage, a 26-year-old French photojournalist who had spent months documenting deadly conflict in Central African Republic has been killed, the French presidency said Tuesday, May 13. Lepage, a freelance photographer whose work was published in major French and American newspapers, died in western Central African Republic not far from the border with Cameroon, authorities said”. – Associated Press. Photo: Anti-balaka fighters from the town of Bossembele patrol in the Boeing district of Bangui, Central African Republic, February 24, 2014. (Photo by Camille Lepage/Reuters)

In this Tuesday, March 31, 2015 photo, Indian women walk carrying firewood they collected from a forest at Gobhali village on the outskirts of Gauhati, India. Every evening, hundreds of millions of Indian women hover over crude stoves making dinner for their families. They feed the flames with polluting fuels like kerosene or cow dung, and breathe the acrid smoke wafting from the fires. (Photo by Anupam Nath/AP Photo)