Two of the first six “neighborhood electric vehicles” (NEV) to be leased by the U.S. Army are on display during an introductory ceremony at Fort Myer January 12, 2009 in Arlington, Virginia. The Army has leased 800 of the non-tactical NEVs with a goal of 4,000 vehicles by 2011. These NEVs are manufactured by the Global Electric Motorcars division of Chrysler Corporation. With a full eight-hour charge, the NEVs can traverse 30 miles at a top speed of 25-miles-per-hour. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

A starling jealously guards a seed station in the back garden of the photographer’s Michigan home in January 2024. (Photo by Lisa Cavanary/Solent News)

A striking spiral of golden ginkgo leaves raked with care in a private garden in Petersdorf, Brandenburg, Germany on November 2, 2025. (Photo by Patrick Pleu/dpa)

A brown capuchin monkey holds a fruit in the Botanic Garden of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on July 5, 2013. (Photo by Pablo Porciuncula/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)

Starlings are seen at their nesting box in a private garden in the town of Bobruisk, Belarus, April 8, 2018. (Photo by Vasily Fedosenko/Reuters)

Demi Rose seen attending I Saw It First party at SUSHISAMBA Covent Garden on February 11, 2019 in London, England. (Photo by The Mega Agency)

A visitor and autumn foliage are reflected in the lake at Stourhead gardens in Wiltshire, Britain, November 2, 2018. (Photo by Toby Melville/Reuters)