Born the son of Sir Albert Edward Whitaker, 1st Baronet and educated at Eton College[2] and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, Whitaker was commissioned into the Coldstream Guards of the British Army on 12 May 1915 during the First World War.
[3][1] His service during the war was on the Western Front with the third battalion, where he was wounded in April 1918 during the German spring offensive[4] and taken prisoner by the enemy.
[1] He was then made Deputy Assistant Adjutant and Quartermaster-General with London District from 1932 to 1933, later serving as a staff officer with Eastern Command in 1933 to 1936.
[6][1][7] He was deployed to France with his brigade as part of the 3rd Infantry Division in the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) at the start of the Second World War in late 1939.
[8] After serving as a Brigadier General Staff (BGS) with Western Command from August 1940, he went on to be Director of Military Training at the War Office in London in March 1942.