Russian army soldiers, dressed in WWII era uniforms, march along the Red Square during a general rehearsal for the Victory Day military parade which will take place at Moscow's Red Square on May 9 to celebrate 70 years after the victory in WWII, in Moscow, Russia, Thursday, May 7, 2015. (Photo by Ivan Sekretarev/AP Photo)

Malabon Zoo owner Manny Tangco holds a full-grown but very small rooster named “Small But Terrible” from Malaysia to compare it with the giant red rooster from France named “Mr. Universe” as they are shown to the media as part of the “Roosters of the World” exhibition to celebrate the “Red Fire Rooster” in the Chinese lunar calendar Friday, January 27, 2017 in suburban Malabon city north of Manila, Philippines. The Roosters of the World exhibition features roosters from countries as the United States, Japan, United Kingdom, France, China, Malaysia, Indonesia and Poland. (Photo by Bullit Marquez/AP Photo)

Riot police clash with protesters during a rally to demand a referendum to remove Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro in Caracas, Venezuela, September 1, 2016. (Photo by Marco Bello/Reuters)

A picture made available on 09 October 2016 shows competitors during a Legion Run event, in Sofiko near the city of Corinth, Greece, 08 October 2016. Legion Run is run covering five kilometres with obstacles of mud, fire, ice and barbed wire, which takes place in different countries around the globe. (Photo by Vassilis Psomas/EPA)

Bronze whaler shark (Carcharhinus brachyurus), caught in traditional seine net and released by fisherman, Muizenberg beach, Cape Town, South Africa on October 11, 2016. Action shots have captured fishermen trying to free a potentially deadly Bronze Whaler shark who was caught in their nets. The incredible images show the eight-foot-long 500-pound predator lunging its mouth towards the fishermen who are desperately trying to pull it back into the safety of the sea by its tail. Eventually they succeeded. (Photo by Chris and Monique Fallows/NPL)

Students pose for a picture with a 3- D optical illusion artwork of a devastated cityscape in Aleppo, Syria at the campus of the Meiji University in Tokyo on November 18, 2016. The Japanese branch of the human rights organisation Amnesty International displayed the artwork to encourage people to think about the Syrian civil war. (Photo by Toshifumi Kitamura/AFP Photo)

A newly-married couple takes a nap before their mass wedding ceremony at the CheongShim Peace World Center in Gapyeong, South Korea, Sunday, February 17, 2013. Some 3,500 South Korean and foreign couples exchanged or reaffirmed marriage vows in the Unification Church's mass wedding arranged by Hak Ja Han Moon, a wife of the late Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the controversial founder of the Unification Church. (Photo by Lee Jin-man/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)