The phrase "a commandant" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to refer to a military officer in charge of a particular unit or installation.
Example: "The commandant addressed the troops before their deployment."
Alternatives: "a commanding officer" or "a military leader".
The rank of a commandant depends upon the size and importance of his command: in the British Army a colonel commandant is the senior officer of a regiment; in the French Army a commandant is the commanding officer of a battalion, a rank equivalent to major; and the commandant of the United States Marine Corps is a four-star general.
(It remains inhabited today, actually, though not by a commandant).
She was appointed a Commandant of the Legion of Honor in 1987.
They even abetted the forging of a letter by a commandant, Hubert Joseph Henry, that allegedly confirmed Dreyfus's guilt.
His grandfather was a commandant at West Point who was eulogized by General Douglas MacArthur and wrote a book on military strategy.
One recent morning, he paced the paddock, his whip tucked under his arm as if he were a commandant, looking for driverless horses, so he could - his word - badger their handlers into letting him substitute.
There's even one website which claims this game is such a hit that a prison commandant went to a party dressed as an inmate, handcuffed and flanked by two guards.
The furore around a book of "inspirational" (America's synonym for Christian) fiction featuring a romance between Aric von Schmidt, a Nazi commandant and a half-Jewish woman, Hadassah Benjamin, is no surprise.
Continuing on his unprincipled way, Spradlin, still curling his lip, was equally effective as a CIA boss in The Man With the Deadly Lens (1982); a martinet commandant of a southern military academy in The Lords of Discipline (1983), and an ignorant and malicious small-town sheriff in Tank (1984).
Two more sixties novels — "The Dance of Genghis Cohn," about a Holocaust victim who becomes the dybbuk of a Nazi commandant, and "White Dog," a supposedly nonfiction account of a dog trained to attack black people — were events and best-sellers, too.
He has played, among many others, a sexual predator who pimps teenage boys, a concentration-camp commandant, a Knights Hospitaller, and a half-blood wizard in a string of Harry Potters.
