Photo by Roger Mattingly
Laotian Border, 1971 

This photograph was taken while Burrows was covering his last story, "The Edge of Laos," three days before he was killed in a helicopter crash. 

Larry Burrows began working in LIFE magazine's London bureau in 1942, as a "tea boy" whose job it was to fetch cups of steaming tea. In 1945 he started to photograph people like Ernest Hemingway and Winston Churchill.

He didn't like being called a war photographer, but he spent much of his career on battlefields for LIFE magazine covering conflicts in the Congo, the Middle East and Vietnam. He was a three time winner of the Robert Capa Gold Medal for still photography requiring exceptional courage and enterprise.

He was named 1967 Magazine Photographer of the Year by the Pictures of the Year competition of the National Press Photographers Association.

(Requiem)