After serving as aide-de-camp to the Viceroy of India from 1879 and then as aide-de-camp to the General Officer Commanding Western District from 1884,[1] he was appointed Deputy Assistant Adjutant-General in Meerut in 1890, Assistant Adjutant-General in Ambala in 1892 and Commandant of the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston in 1896.[2] In Canada he introduced major reforms clearing out the staff and reducing the College programme from four years to three years.[3] and in the New Year Honours on 1 January 1901 he was appointed a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) for his work there.[4]
He went on to be military attaché in Washington D. C. in 1900. Two years later he was on 17 September 1902 appointed Commandant of the Royal Military College Sandhurst,[5] arriving there after a tumultuous year at the college during which cadets had been expelled and its position as a place of discipline was at stake. He was given command of the Jubbulpore Brigade in India in 1907 and of the Jullundur Brigade in 1908 before becoming Quartermaster-General in India in 1909. He commanded the 2nd (Rawalpindi) Division in India from 1912, through the early years of the Great War, until 1916[2] and retired in 1918.[1]
Kitson lived at Wendlebury House near Bicester in Oxfordshire.[6] In 1939 he gave his support to a campaign to stop the abolition of the kilt in the British Army.[7]