Educated at the Edinburgh Academy,[3] and was commissioned from the Royal Military College, Sandhurst as a Second Lieutenant into the Unattached List for the Indian Army, 15 August 1914.

[13] He was made Assistant Quartermaster General in Iraq later that year and was put in charge of Administration at Southern Command in India on 21 March 1942, with the acting rank of major-general.

[5][19][20] He was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB) in the 1945 New Year Honours,[21] and Bucher was promoted to the substantive rank of major-general on 6 April 1945 (with seniority from 5 June 1944).

[24][5] During the Indo-Pakistani war of 1947–1948, the Indian army under his command succeeded in pushing back the Pakistani military and tribesmen and captured most of the contested territory.

On 28 November 1948, Bucher had advised Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to agree to a ceasefire because "overall military decision was no longer possible".