During the Battle of Cape Esperance at Guadalcanal, Poole was in charge of the Forward Magazine Flooding Control Station aboard USS Boise.

Poole's mother used a bottle filled with water from Liberty Creek in Mississippi to christen the ship instead of the traditional Champagne.

Returning to New York 5 February, she shifted to the North Atlantic sea lanes and for the next 15 months escorted high speed convoys (tankers and transports) to ports in the United Kingdom and, after June 1944, on the European Continent.

On 4 September she departed Pearl Harbor and proceeded to Saipan, thence to Honshū, where she joined the occupation forces.

After a month of occupation patrol duty off Wakayama, Japan, Poole was underway 29 October for San Diego, California, whence she steamed to the East Coast, reaching Charleston, South Carolina, 10 December.