It's also worth considering if you send 50+ people on a year long voyage, even if you pick a bunch of ideal, healthy candidates, there are GOING to be some medical complications. That's literally unavoidable.
Between accidents, human error, human physiology, limited treatment options, and shear probability, someone will probably not make it there alive.

"Sometimes I can still hear his voice!" *sobbing*

Since it's caused by refraction, it will always face the eye of the beholder. It's like those 2D sprites in video games that always turn to face you, but physics.

Nah, he'd probably hit Aragon in the foot, thereby breaking his toe.

Try hard enough and you can cut that down to 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2...

"Well you're obviously missing the 'Republic'"

First thing I saw when the page loaded and I just broke down laughing before even seeing the text.
i love this image.

Historically, Mexico doesn't have much more moral high ground than any other country, and into modern times there's been far to much political turmoil for them to be a major player in the things other countries get branded for. But their exploitation of natives and minorities on political and religious grounds firmly puts them as a relevant country for the above meme.

Mexico was founded as part of the Spanish Hegenomy, established largely via mass genocide and enslavement of the local populations.
After the independence war of 1810, the Mexican government continued to war with the indigenous Comanche people in an attempt to expand into their territory, heavily to the detriment of their own northern states and their people.
Next up is the Mexican-American war of 1846, which is a pretty morally grey area, but saying either side was morally clear is blatantly false
Then comes a few decades of turmoil led by political and religions ideologies, which heavily impacted the poorer citizens who made up majority of the population. (the French bit was arguably self defence, but since it was based on previous political decisions one can't really claim a moral high ground here either).
After a bit over a century of that, with citizen's conditions gradually improving throughout showing some growth as a country, we're getting pretty close to modern Mexico.

Statistically highly unlikely; which country?

If Legolas with a rifle is something like Hawkeye or Deadshot and he had a regular mid calibre rifle, he could probably carry more magazines on him with more rounds than he could carry arrows. The reloading might be an issue, but the higher fire rate than a bow should make up for it. A proper sniper would be excessive for killing via headshots, and ammo would be a much more limiting factor. Just handing him a rifle probably wouldn't accomplish much though, since he's trained with a bow.
Orcs typically cluster though, so the LMG with an extra drum or two would probably make a bigger impact. But a couple grenades would have a bigger impact still.

Saga of Tanya the Evil is amazing. Anybody should totally check it out if you want awesome magic/tech fusion in a WW1 setting.
"A diffusive magical explosion. It's caused when magic under maximum pressure mixes with the surrounding air. Even if you dodge the centre impact, you'll be killed by the oxygen deprivation and carbon monoxide poisoning that followed. We didn't need to provide any fire support."

On the other hand, if you're concerned with a violent reaction, it would be much better to do it in public to discourage a scene, or at least have witnesses.