During the First World War Bucknall, promoted to the temporary rank of lieutenant on 5 October 1914 (made permanent on 11 December 1914),[7] served with the 1st Battalion, Middlesex in France and Belgium with some distinction, in particular during the Battle of the Somme on 25 August 1916 where he took command of the battalion and was awarded the Military Cross (MC). The citation for the MC reads:
For conspicuous gallantry in action. When his senior officers had become casualties, he went up and down the line cheering and reorganising his men in face of very heavy fire.[8]
Bucknall was promoted to brevet lieutenant colonel on 1 January 1936,[14] and attended the Royal Naval College, Greenwich. From 13 March 1937[15] until 12 April 1939 he served as an instructor at the Royal Military College of Canada, taking over from Gordon MacMillan, where he came into contact with some of the Canadian generals of the next war, such as Harry Crerar, the college Commandant, and E. L. M. Burns and Guy Simonds, both fellow instructors. He returned to the United Kingdom in 1939 and became CO of the 2nd Battalion, Middlesex Regiment.[5][1] He was only with the battalion for a few short months, however, before receiving promotion to colonel on 1 August (with seniority backdating to 1 January 1939) and being made an Assistant Quartermaster-General at the War Office.[16]
Frustrated at training troops and wishing to command them in battle in an overseas theatre of war, he requested demotion in rank, to temporary major general, so he could command a division. Sent to the Mediterranean theatre, his chance came on 3 August 1943 when he became GOC of the 5th Infantry Division in succession to Major-General Horatio Berney-Ficklin, who had been in command for over three years.[6] The division was then fighting in Sicily, which had been invaded the month before by the Allies, and was serving as part of the British Eighth Army, commanded by General Sir Bernard Montgomery, who had been one of Bucknall's instructors at the Staff College. Bucknall led the division during the final stages of the campaign in Sicily, followed in September by the Allied invasion of Italy and in the early stages of the Italian campaign, including in the First Battle of Monte Cassino in January 1944.[5][21] His rank of major general was made permanent on 21 December 1943.[22]
Bucknall's relatively brief performance under his command had sufficiently impressed Montgomery, who in late December 1943 returned to the United Kingdom to take command of the 21st Army Group, and when he was chosen to command Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of Normandy, he appointed Bucknall to command XXX Corps – Bucknall took command on 27 January 1944, and was made an acting lieutenant general.[5] On 11 March his rank of lieutenant general was made temporary.[23] The Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS), Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke, believed Bucknall to be unsuitable for command at that level.[11]
In August 1944 Bucknall was sacked, due to the relatively poor performance of XXX Corps (see Operation Perch) and replaced by Lieutenant General Brian Horrocks.[5] Montgomery conceded that it had been a mistake to appoint him and, in November 1944, Bucknall revert to his permanent rank of major general and was given command of Northern Ireland, a post he held until his retirement from the army on 4 March 1948. He was granted the honorary rank of lieutenant general.[24][5][1]
Postwar
In 1952 Bucknall was given the colonelcy of the Middlesex Regiment, a position he held until 1959.[25] He died at the age of 86 on 7 December 1980 in a nursing home in Chegworth.[1][21]
