Her first passport shows that she left the island in April 1917, to do what was referred to as "camp work". The Salvation Army ran Rest Huts and Red Shield Hostels wherever there were large concentrations of troops. Ada was stationed first at Salisbury Plain, from where she sent a postcard to her mother at home in Guernsey saying that all she was waiting for was "a letter from France" presumably one telling her that she had been posted there, and she described herself as "one who is doing her bit".. She then went to France in the autumn of 1917 and was stationed at Boulogne, Abbeville, Arras, and Ostrohove. Her notebook records that she was under fire on more than one occasion: "Slept in barn. Jerry over. Dropped five around us. Shrapnel through roof. Awful experience" reads an entry for August 13th 1918, whilst the 14th reads "Arrived hut half past four morning. Shrapnel through roof. Table smashed." She also records lengthy journeys on foot, and, on a postcard showing the destruction around Arras, asks "Do you think we want strong boots on these roads?" She also describes the desolation around her with "...nothing but ruins to see. No Hall or chapels or church near… all over this district is the same, you just see wooden huts put together with old iron they have picked up on the battlefields".

The Salvation Army huts or hostels were in the main long wooden buildings erected at places where there were large numbers of soldiers passing through on their way to and from the Front. They were typically staffed by a married Salvationist couple plus five or six young "sisters" who assisted them with the day to day work. Routine camp work involved catering for the soldiers in what The Great War magazine describes as "real homelike style". The staff had to obtain what food they could within an area where the front line was constantly moving, and where entire towns and villages were totally devastated by shells and bombs. Ada's notebooks include several shopping lists for basics such as carrots, turnips, flour, cheese and eggs. However they always seemed to find something, and "Ma" Huish, one of the best known camp "mothers", based at the huge transit camp at Etaples, was reputed to have fried 2,000 eggs a day for the men.

Ada Le Poidevin seated in the centre

The women workers also washed and mended uniforms, wrote letters to relatives at home, or simply listened and talked with the men as well as appealing to their spiritual side with Biblical readings and music, as the Salvation Army has always believed in "practical Christianity" - William Booth, the founder of the movement once said "I must assert in the most unqualified way that it is primarily and mainly for the sake of saving the soul that I seek the salvation of the body.". The "sisters" also visited the sick and dying in hospitals and wrote letters home for them or brought them small comforts such as soap and handkerchiefs. An example of this type of service is contained in a letter (unpublished) from Mary Booth to the mother of a wounded soldier, (one of a series covering a period of about 18 months from when he went into hospital in France until he was repatriated to England). Staff Captain Booth describes how she had tried to get some tomatoes for the young man because he had expressed a wish for them, and had tried previously without success to send for them. Small homely comforts like this must have meant a lot to young men in hospital far from their homes and families, and also to the parents at home, unable to help directly.

The "sisters" also spent time just talking to the men and listening to their worries, and if possible communicating with those at home to try to sort things out. An obvious advantage that the Salvation Army had over other welfare organisations was that the women workers tended to come from the same social classes as the men with whom they were working, and so could relate to them in a way that "lady" volunteers could not in the clearly defined class structure of those days. Nor was there ever any scandal associated with the "Sally Anns", despite misgivings about the "coarsening" effect that war service would have on women who had previously led a more sheltered and protected life.

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