We consider the Cauchy problem for the Burgers hierarchy with general time dependent coefficients. The closed form for the Green's function of the corresponding linear equation of arbitrary order N is shown to be a sum of generalised hypergeometric functions. For suitably damped initial conditions we plot the time dependence of the Cauchy problem over a range of N values. For N = 1, we introduce a spatial forcing term. Using connections between the associated second order linear Schrödinger and Fokker-Planck equations, we give closed form expressions for the corresponding Green's functions of the sinked Bessel process with constant drift. We then apply the Green's function to give time dependent profiles for the corresponding forced Burgers Cauchy problem.