The 12th General Hospital doctors and nurses relied on a team of enlisted men to convert existing structures in the Mediterranean Theater into a medical facility that could offer care akin to those in the United States. These utility workers were in charge of wiring buildings, installing generators, setting up hot water boilers and connecting them to appliances, putting in place plumbing and water systems, painting, and performing maintenance projects. In addition to those proscribed responsibilities, the utilities department was expected to build furniture such as cabinets, examining tables, and shadow boxes for all of the wards and other pieces of furniture for different outfits of the Unit. Throughout the War, the utilities department faced many challenges from modernizing the nineteenth-century villas in Ain-el-Turck to encountering the bombed out infrastructure of Livorno
Carpentry shop in Italy