Indonesian soldiers wearing facemasks and personal protective equipment take a part in a sack race during games to celebrate ahead of the country's 75th Independence Day in Surabaya, East Java on August 14, 2020. Indonesia will mark its 75th Independence Day on August 17. (Photo by Juni Kriswanto/AFP Photo)

Miss Amazonas Ileana Marquez kisses her daughter, after winning the Miss Venezuela 2023 pageant, whose winner will participate in the Miss Universe 2024 contest, in Caracas, Venezuela on December 8, 2023. (Photo by Leonardo Fernandez Viloria/Reuters)

A boy wears a medieval helmet during a festival dedicated to the Day of Russia in St. Petersburg, Russia, Wednesday, June 12, 2024. The Day of Russia is celebrated annually on 12 June. (Photo by Dmitri Lovetsky/AP Photo)

Supporters of former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump arrive for a campaign rally at the PPL Center in Allentown, Pennsylvania, on October 29, 2024. (Photo by Angela Weiss/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)

Pedestrians cover their face as they walk along the dusty road in Kathmandu, Nepal February 27, 2017. Nepal has forced 2,500 old vehicles off roads in its capital city of Kathmandu, part of a fight against alarming air pollution levels that have hit nine times World Health Organisation (WHO) limits. Air pollution has been a chronic problem in rapidly growing Kathmandu, which sits in a Himalayan valley and is home to more than 3mn people. (Photo by Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters)

Garbage pickers collect ride on donkey cart while looking for recyclable materials at a rubbish dump in the outskirts of Baghdad, Iraq, August 23, 2016. Despite its huge untapped oil and gas reserves and steadily rising oil output and revenue, 23 percent of the population live below the poverty line, according to the Ministry of Planning. (Photo by Khalid al Mousily/Reuters)

A member of Four Paws International team carries a pelican to be taken out of Gaza, at a zoo in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip August 23, 2016. Fifteen animals including a bengal tiger were removed from “the world’s worst zoo” in the Gaza town of Khan Younis as it was finally closed down. Animal welfare group, Four Paws International, will help bring most of the refugees to a zoo in Jordan, but the tiger will be taken to a refuge in South Africa. (Photo by Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters)