People wear face masks while participating in the annual Memorial Day Parade on May 25, 2020 in the Staten Island borough of New York City. Dozens of cars and nearly 100 members of the patriotic motorcycle group Rolling Thunder joined the event. This year’s parade was diminished in size and in person-to-person contact due to the coronavirus outbreak. Across the country, events honoring the nation’s veterans have been cancelled or scaled back as America continues to experience high numbers of deaths and new cases of COVID-19. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

English model Katie Price pictured going topless while on holiday with boyfriend Kris Boyson at Ammatara Pura Pool Villas resort in Thailand on July 13, 2018. The happy couple looked relaxed in matching yellow Bikini and shorts as they frolicked with each other by the pool as they enjoyed their first holiday together at exclusive resort in Thailand. (Photo by Backgrid UK)

Christie Brinkley and Ashley Graham pose after Lifetime's American Beauty Star Season 2 Live Finale at Manhattan Center on March 27, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by Mike Coppola/Getty Images for Lifetime)

The Villarrica Volcano is seen at night from Pucon town, Chile, July 12, 2015. Villarrica, located near the popular tourist resort of Pucon, is among the most active volcanoes in South America. (Photo by Cristobal Saavedra/Reuters)

A large Pacific sideband snail slowly crosses a rain wet road in rural Douglas County, Oregon near Elkton on Sunday, December 2, 2012. The moisture loving snail should be very content with the recent heavy rains in southwestern Oregon and northern California. (Photo by Robin Loznak)

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)

Soniya, 6, whose family moved to Islamabad from Pakistan's Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province to look for work, stands outside their house on the outskirts of Islamabad January 1, 2015. (Photo by Zohra Bensemra/Reuters)