Francis Tuker

Lieutenant General Sir Francis Ivan Simms Tuker KCIE CB DSO OBE (4 July 1894 – 7 October 1967) was a senior British Indian Army officer who commanded the 4th Indian Infantry Division during the Second World War from 1941. During the Italian campaign he requested the bombing of the historical Monte Cassino Abbey in 1944 which led to its complete destruction. Early life The son of William J. Sanger Tuker, of Butts Green Hall, Sandon, Essex, by his marriage to Katherine Louisa Simms, of Yew House, Twickenham, Tuker was educated at Brighton College, East Sussex, of which he was in later life a governor, and attended the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, from 1912 to 1913. Military career Commissioned as a second lieutenant into the British Army's Royal Sussex Regiment in 1914, later that year Tuker transferred to the 2nd Gurkha Rifles of the Indian Army, in which he was commissioned as a second lieutenant on 10 October. He saw active service in the First World War and served as an acting captain from 14 March to 12 April 1916, and was promoted to the substantive rank of lieutenant on 17 August 1917, back-dated to 1 September 1915. Promoted to captain on 14 January 1918, he took part in the Kuki Punitive expedition that year and, after the war, was an officer of the North West Persia operations between 1920 and 1921.