A Mills shipmate contributes the following: I can add a little info regarding the visit to Rosyth, Scotland. The reason for the visit was to repair storm damage caused while on picket duty off Iceland. We were in a major storm and were thrown out of the water enough that the main deck and part of the outer bulkhead (hull) were cracking. We were in danger of breaking in half. We were relieved from duty and limped into the British Naval Shipyards at Rosyth. We were in dry dock for about a week while a crew of Scotish workers welded us back together working around the clock. It was hell trying to sleep but we got plenty of liberty in Edinburgh. I think we went back on picket following repairs after which we were sent to Copenhagen, Denmark for weeks worth of R&R. When we returned from Scotland we spent the winter in the Boston Naval Shipyards, in dry dock, for an overhaul. That spring we went to Gitmo, Cuba for shakedown and ORI. When we got back to Newport I had orders waiting and was transfered to the Joesph P. Kennedy, Jr. DD-850. . She had just came out of the Brooklyn shipyard having undergone a FRAM coversion. As luck would have it she, and I, went straight back to Cuba for another 9 weeks. The Mills did a picket off Key West at a place called Dog Rocks. She then left for picket duty in the Med. ( I think ) and made a port call at Le Harve, France. I remember talking to some of the Mills crew about the trip and they were expressing disappointment at the way they were received by the French. Apparently the French snubbed them. This would have been in great contrast to the way the Scots treated us. Our port of operation in Scotland was Greenoch on the Fyrth of Clyde. When we pulled into Greenoch we were the first American war ship to tie up there since the end of WWII. There was lots of Scotish hostility to American sailors who served on Nuke subs out of Holy Loch but they couldn't have been nicer to us destroyer sailors. They treated us like we had been the sailors that had helped liberate Europe from the Nazi. . The only other reference I remember was during the Cuban Missle Crisis I copied a radio transmission from the Mills to a shore station and she was monitoring a Soviet ship/ships in the Atlantic that was/were thought to be headed for Cuba. Shipmate:   Larry Chapman, RM3, USS Mills 61-62

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