Seems to me...

...that the most effective punishment for posing as a hero of any kind when not entitled to do so is to be exposed as a fraud.

In the movie The Boston Strangler, there is a character who poses as an army officer to impress women (very successfully too) who gets swept up in the dragnet. He says he isn't doing anything illegal, and a detective says it is an offence to impersonate an officer. He replies, "not if you don't wear the uniform". Maybe that has changed.

I was supposed to go to Vietnam, but I blew it off.