New York nightclub owner Jack L Hickman spends his free time marching around Times Square with a sign that reads “The only good communist is a dead communist”. (Photo by Peter Keegan/Keystone/Getty Images). 26th April 1965

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

Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (1874–1965), British Statesman and Prime Minister inspecting the boys from a training ship. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images). 1912

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)

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

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)