An Afghan girl jumps off the wall of a small cemetery in Kandahar on July 29, 2022. (Photo by Daniel Leal/AFP Photo)

A contestant holds three Pomeranians during the FCI-CACIB Zakarpattia 2021 International Dog Show at the Avanhard Stadium, Uzhhorod, Zakarpattia Region, western Ukraine on September 19, 2021. (Photo by Ukrinform/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

A man shows his inked finger after casting his ballot at a polling station during the second phase of voting of India's general elections in Masuda, Rajasthan state, on April 26, 2024. (Photo by Himanshu Sharma/AFP 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 performer wears a face shield at a shopping center on New Year's Eve during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, in Bangkok, Thailand on December 31, 2020. (Photo by Soe Zeya Tun/Reuters)

A destroyed tank sits by the side of a road leading to Abi Adi, in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia, on Tuesday, May 11, 2021. The Tigray People’s Liberation Front was on top of a coalition that ruled Ethiopia for nearly three decades. That changed in 2018, when Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed rose to power as a reformist. Abiy alienated the TPLF with efforts to make peace with its archenemy, Eritrea, and rid the federal government of corruption. (Photo by Ben Curtis/AP Photo)

Children play in the Crown Fountain at Millennium Park in Chicago, Wednesday, June 29, 2022. (Photo by Nam Y. Huh/AP Photo)

The rabbit population of San Juan Island, brought in to feed lighthouse keepers, got so big that in the 1930s foxes were introduced to kill them. Although they are red foxes, their coats can be orange, silver, black or multi-coloured. Picture date: September 2023. (Photo by Jun Zuo/Solent News)