BELLINGHAM — No one would have guessed the contents of a brown plastic bag with a camouflage design laid against the Veterans Traveling Tribute, a replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

The bag sat untouched, as are some other items left at the wall, for almost two days before the coordinator of the memorial wall’s visit, Shelley Prentice, finally opened it. And when she did, she couldn’t believe her eyes.

The bag contained five medals, including an Army Distinguished Service Cross and Purple Heart, in original blue tin cases.

“That’s just amazing,” Prentice said. “These are the highest medals you can get, short of the Congressional Medal of Honor.”

Medals are occasionally left beside the traveling wall, a smaller replica of the memorial in Washington, D.C. The tradition of leaving items is believed to have begun in 1982 at The Wall in D.C. when someone put a Purple Heart in the concrete being poured during the memorial’s construction, according to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Web site.

The bag was left at the traveling wall in Bellingham sometime during the night of Friday, July 10. Prentice said she didn’t find time to open it until the last day of the wall’s visit on Sunday.

Other items left at the wall included two silver dollars, a tin containing brown cigarettes, lip balm and American flags.

The bag was laid next to the section of wall with a panel dated June 6-7, 1968. Prentice believes they were put there by a veteran and not a family member.

“A family member would pass these down as heirlooms,” she said.

A veteran likely left them as a thank you to his fellow service members or as a way of letting go of his past, Prentice said.

A neighbor of Prentice’s told her a relative met a Vietnam veteran who mentioned that his whole platoon had been killed during a battle in Vietnam. Prentice wonders if he was the one who left the bag.

None of the items left at the memorial travel with the wall. They are catalogued and sent to a museum. Prentice would like to make sure the person doesn’t want the medals back before they are put under glass.

“I just want to do the right thing,” she said.