A boy makes his way on a bicycle along a flooded road near the Ganges River in Allahabad on August 23, 2022, as water levels rose following monsoon rainfalls. (Photo by Sanjay Kanojia/AFP Photo)

Members of the Australian Jewish community participate in a gathering called ‘Balloons of Hope’, which represents Israeli hostages who are currently being held by the Palestinian group Hamas, in Sydney on October 27, 2023. Thousands of civilians, both Palestinians and Israelis, have died since October 7, 2023, after Palestinian Hamas militants based in the Gaza Strip entered southern Israel in an unprecedented attack triggering a war declared by Israel on Hamas with retaliatory bombings on Gaza. (Photo by David Gray/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)

A Kashmiri Muslim bride looks through her veil during a mass wedding event in Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir, Thursday, June 15, 2023. Mass weddings in India are organized by social organizations primarily to help the economically backward families who cannot afford the high ceremony costs as well as the customary dowry and expensive gifts that are still prevalent in many communities. (Photo by Mukhtar Khan/AP Photo)

Young devotees carry oil lamps in the early morning of the tenth day celebrations of Hindu Nepali festival “Dashain” at a temple in Bhaktapur on the outskirts of Kathmandu on October 24, 2023. (Photo by Prakash Mathema/AFP Photo)

A theater company performs “Insectes” during Santiago a Mil International Theater Festival in Santiago, Chile on January 12, 2023. (Photo by Ivan Alvarado/Reuters)

A model waits backstage during a show of the third bi-annual Budapest Central European Fashion Week in Budapest, Hungary, 30 March 2019. (Photo by Zoltan Balogh/EPA/EFE)

Pfc. Esmeralda Calderon stands and salutes the flag on the 15th green during the first round of the LPGA golf tournament at Kingsmill Resort and Golf Course in Williamsburg, Va., Thursday May 23, 2019. Pfc. Calderon, from San Antonio, Texas, is a Marine assigned to Naval Weapons Station Yorktown. (Photo by John Sudbrink/The Daily Press via AP Photo)