[Icelander]

Not all the questions I have are about ancient history, either. Here's something more recent than WWII, even more recent than Vietnam, but still not the modern Corps (I have plenty of questions about the modern USMC too).

Example NPC the Second

Guillermo Wagner (b. December 16, 1958; Havana, Cuba) was born to a father who was was part of the management of a US-owned casino in Havana and a young Cubano mother who worked there. Guillermo moved away with his father after Castro took over in Cuba and became a citizen of the United States at some point in the 1960s, having lived in Texas and Florida (his father traveled a lot for business and took him along).

In 1977, after having been expelled from three universities, Guillermo joined the USMC. His father officially drew pay as a security contractor, but had served in the French Foreign Legion and some of his work for French and US mineral and petroleum companies in Africa was nothing short of mercenary work. So, while his father wanted Guillermo to become a business executive with an Ivy League education*, Guillermo could not imagine being anything other than a warrior, like his father and 'uncles', veterans of many different military services.

So, as a 19-year-old kid who grew up around former Legionnaires, actual mercenaries, Cuban expatriates, shadowy Air America pilots and the kind of real-life adventurers who are vanishingly rare in the modern world, what might his Marine Corps career have been like?

Guillermo is smart, tough and aggressive, but he'd have struggled with military discipline. He was probably a very promising recruit, in that he would have excelled at marksmanship, PT, fieldcraft and military aptitude tests**, but he was probably not going to make rank.

Guillermo was not planning on a career in the USMC. He wanted to prove to himself and his father that he could finish the toughest training he could find and excel as a combat soldier. If he could, he would have enlisted for a three-year hitch rather than a four year one (which I think might have been possible at that time), especially since it was peacetime and peacetime soldiering would have bored Guillermo unless he was provided with very challenging training.

As it turned out, Guillermo only served the one enlistment contract in the USMC and then joined the French Foreign Legion, where his father and many of his uncles had served. As there was no war there either, he only served one five year contract there, before leaving (not happy with the peacetime Legion either) and going into the same 'security contractor' field as his father.

Fortunately for Guillermo, the setting diverged from our world not long after that, so instead of being arrested for his part of an ill-considered coup somewhere in Africa, he eventually became a 'Night Rider' (Monster Hunters), along with many of his 'uncles' (his father was one of the main instructors for the first ones).

With that being said, how might a gung-ho, slightly crazy young man in 1977 go about joining the Marines if he wanted to maximize his chances of getting the most high-speed, low-drag training possible and being assigned to something exciting when the Cold War turned hot?

Someone genuinely disappointed that he missed Vietnam, who believes that there will be another war like it any day now, and wants to be among the first to fight?

Guillermo has high Attributes and relevant Advantages (inc. military Talent) to be a great combat soldier. In the peacetime military, he got in trouble, but combat veteran NCOs would probably recognize that the kid had genuine gifts if the USMC ever got into something like Vietnam again.

Would that be enough to get Guillermo into any interesting courses, schools, units or postings in the 1977-1980 era?

For example, if Guillermo was already better at fieldcraft, stalking and shooting than most professional soldiers when he enlisted, what are his odds of making it to Scout-Sniper School if he's only signed up for 3-4 years?

Or is there some assignment or training that might appeal even more to him that he could realistically try for in that period?

Basically, what's the most interesting career Guillermo could have had in the US Marine Corps between 1977-1980 (or 1981 if a three-year enlistment was impossible at that time) that would still have resulted in an honorable discharge?

*Because the father had been lucky enough to be friends with someone who had struck it rich and could afford to send Guillermo to any school he wanted, not to mention that having a Texas oil billionaire for a godfather would give him a leg up in getting lucrative employment.
**His father may not have intended him to become a soldier, but Ziggy Wagner would have considered it part of basic child-rearing to teach his son military skills. Also, he spent much of his formative years as the mascot of one paramilitary, security or mercenary force or another, from Cubano patriots to African mercenaries. He's had a lot of 'uncles' who didn't see why a boy who wanted to learn to fight should have be forced into becoming an over-educated suit.