A family of children share a bath in Japan, circa 1965. (Photo by Three Lions/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Women loyal to the Houthi movement parade to show support to the movement in Sanaa, Yemen January 17, 2017. (Photo by Khaled Abdullah/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)

A Russian-made rifle, carried by this woman when she was captured in Nearby Brush, is slung around her neck by South Vietnamese soldiers before they began their interrogation of her as Viet Cong suspect near AP La Ghi in Vietnam, August 25, 1965. The girl behind the woman, also was captured in the brush. (Photo by AP Photo)

A girl sits on a pile of rubbish at landfill site on the outskirts of Sanaa, Yemen November 16, 2016. (Photo by Mohamed al-Sayaghi/Reuters)

Armed women attend a rally to show support to the Houthi movement in Sanaa, Yemen January 13, 2018. (Photo by Khaled Abdullah/Reuters)

A retrospective of Garry Winogrand's photography is on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. It is the first in 25 years of his work. The show was organized by the San Francisco Museum of Art, and the National Gallery in Washington, DC. Photo: New York, 1965. (Photo by Garry Winogrand/The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco)

People look at a man, who residents said was killed by al Qaeda militants, hanging on a bridge in Yemen's southeastern city of Mukalla June 17, 2015. Al Qaeda militants in Yemen killed two alleged Saudi spies, residents said, accusing them of planting tracking devices which enabled the assassination of the group's leader in a suspected U.S. drone strike. (Photo by Reuters/Stringer)