--- title: Vietnam 1963: LIFE Magazine Color Photos From a Deepening Conflict description: Photographs from Vietnam in 1963, when America was escalating its involvement in a conflict that would, in time, come to define an era. canonical: https://time.com/3881225/vietnam-1963-life-magazine-color-photos-from-a-deepening-conflict/ author: Ben Cosgrove article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-10-19T00:00:56.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T05:03:35.435Z og:title: Vietnam 1963: LIFE Magazine Color Photos From a Deepening Conflict og:description: Photographs from Vietnam in 1963, when America was escalating its involvement in a conflict that would, in time, come to define an era. og:url: https://time.com/3881225/vietnam-1963-life-magazine-color-photos-from-a-deepening-conflict/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0742c73b322b2c13/698847ef55a859ece5a8b1c1/00555337.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Vietnam 1963 by Larry Burrows og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Vietnam 1963: LIFE Magazine Color Photos From a Deepening Conflict twitter:description: Photographs from Vietnam in 1963, when America was escalating its involvement in a conflict that would, in time, come to define an era. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0742c73b322b2c13/698847ef55a859ece5a8b1c1/00555337.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # America in Vietnam, 1963: Deeper Into War by [Ben Cosgrove](https://time.com/author/ben-cosgrove/) ## Ben Cosgrove Oct 19, 2014 12:00 AM UTC  Caption from LIFE. "Sweeping low across enemy-infested scrubland, U.S. pilot-instructor watches Vietnamese napalm strike. Object of the fire bombing is to sear the foliage and flush the enemy into the open." Caption from LIFE. "Sweeping low across enemy-infested scrubland, U.S. pilot-instructor watches Vietnamese napalm strike. Object of the fire bombing is to sear the foliage and flush the enemy into the open."Larry Burrows—Time & Life Pictures/Getty images by [Ben Cosgrove](https://time.com/author/ben-cosgrove/) ## Ben Cosgrove Oct 19, 2014 12:00 AM UTC By early 1963, the number of American military personnel in Vietnam had grown from several hundred to more than 10,000 in a few short years. The ramifications of the United States’ direct involvement in a conflict halfway around the globe — less than a decade after the ceasefire in another brutal war in Korea — were certainly part of the national conversation, but in ’63 America’s growing role in Vietnam was not even close to the all-encompassing, divisive issue it would become by the middle of the decade. Vietnam was on people’s radar, of course, but not as a constant, alarming blip. Military families were learning first-hand (before everyone else, as they always do) that this was no “police action; but for millions of Americans, Vietnam was a mystery, a riddle that no doubt would be resolved and forgotten in time: a little place far away where inscrutable strangers were fighting over . . . _something_. [\[MORE: “Faces of the American Dead in Vietnam: One Week’s Toll”\]](http://life.time.com/history/faces-of-the-american-dead-in-vietnam-one-weeks-toll/#1) All the more remarkable that in January of 1963, LIFE magazine published the powerful cover article, “We Wade Deeper Into Jungle War,” and illustrated it with not one or two photos but with a dozen pictures — most of them in color — by the great photojournalist, Larry Burrows. Burrows, seen at left in Vietnam in 1963, worked steadily — although not exclusively — in Southeast Asia from 1962 until his death in 1971\. His work is often cited as the most searing and the most consistently excellent photography from the war, and several of his pictures (“Reaching Out,” for example, featuring a wounded Marine desperately trying to comfort a stricken comrade after a fierce 1966 firefight) and photo essays (like 1965’s harrowing “One Ride With Yankee Papa 13”) both encompassed and defined the long, polarizing catastrophe in Vietnam. He and three fellow photojournalists died when their helicopter was shot down during operations in Laos. Burrows was 44. The pictures here, meanwhile, are striking not only for the clarity with which they document a scary, widening conflict, but for how graphic they are. To American eyes, long accustomed to having their news sanitized by the major media, the notion that these and similarly gruesome pictures _routinely_ ran in a popular weekly magazine five decades ago will likely come as something of a shock. Today, a photograph of blood stains and broken glass on a street after a car bombing is about the extent of what most Americans will ever see on the nightly news, on bale shows or in their newspapers. (Raggedly severed limbs, torched corpses and viscera-covered walls evidently being deemed too upsetting to the fragile American sensibility.) But it’s worth recalling — or reminding those who weren’t alive at the time — that, starting even before the January 25, 1963, issue in which the photos in this gallery appeared, and throughout the war in Vietnam, LIFE and other major, mainstream American news outlets, in print and on TV, regularly published and broadcast what today would be considered graphic, unsettling content. That LIFE considered this a significant, indeed a groundbreaking article is evidenced by the highly unusual treatment it received on the magazine’s cover. The first slide in this gallery illustrates this perfectly: rather than the customary horizontal, one-sheet image found on literally thousands of other LIFE covers, the January 25, 1963, issue featured an exceedingly rare fold-out, giving full play to Burrows’ powerful portrait. --- _Ben Cosgrove is the Editor of LIFE.com_ ---  LIFE magazine, January 25, 1963. Larry Burrows—Life Magazine  Caption from LIFE. "In Airborne strike last week Vietnamese scramble for American H-21 helicopters landing to ferry them into action near Saigon. The two-day action was successful." Larry Burrows—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. "Bogged in bottomless mud in the Mekong Delta, a Vietnamese clings to a rope as a buddy helps snake him free. They were in an unsuccessful amphibious operation." Larry Burrows—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. "Sweeping low across enemy-infested scrubland, U.S. pilot-instructor watches Vietnamese napalm strike. Object of the fire bombing is to sear the foliage and flush the enemy into the open." Larry Burrows—Time & Life Pictures/Getty images  Caption from LIFE. "U.S. H-21 helicopter arrives in combat area with supplies for a Vietnamese patrol. It flew out wounded soldiers." Larry Burrows—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. "In a hostile village Vietnamese infantrymen warily move past hut they set ablaze after they found it held Communist literature." Larry Burrows—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. "In large-scale probe of the Mekong Delta, Vietnamese soldiers wade into a canal to put their equipment aboard boats. The amphibious operation was designed to ferret out small parties of Communist guerillas hiding out in the nearby flooded paddies." Larry Burrows—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. "With his trigger finger at the ready and rifle aimed, a Vietnamese soldier flushes a man and a boy -- suspected of being Viet Cong -- from a paddy where he found them hiding. Night-fighting guerillas look like any of the region's calico-clad peasants by day." Larry Burrows—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images   Caption from LIFE. "Vietcong soldiers, trapped and shot down in the Delta, lie dead on a nearby shore beside their flag while captured comrades huddle in defeat. Americans in the picture were advisers to the Vietnamese." Larry Burrows—Life Magazine  Caption from LIFE. "A captured Viet Cong kneels in terror as Vietnamese guard threatens him with bayonet. The guard demanded to know where arms were hidden. No reply. The guard let him go to a prison camp unharmed. In interrogating prisoners each side in the Vietnam war occasionally resorts to terror." Larry Burrows—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. "Stripped to the waist and tightly bound, a Viet Cong prisoner is bundled into a Jeep for ride to army headquarters for interrogation. He was questioned about rebel positions, was not harmed." Larry Burrows—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. "Vietnamese pile out of H-21 helicopter near Rach Gia. They flushed out 15 Viet Congs." Larry Burrows—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. "A crewman of a machine-gun-armed escort helicopter searches flat terrain." Larry Burrows—Life Magazine  Caption from LIFE. "U.S. Ranger Captain Jeff Tuten, 29, of De Land, Fla. looks for a landing place. Captain Tuten says, 'I think we're on the winning side.'" 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