Officer commanding everyone left earlier for pub (5)
I believe the answer is:
local
'pub' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'officer commanding everyone left earlier' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite see how this works, but
'officer' could be 'oc' (I've seen this in other clues) and 'oc' is located in the answer.
'left' could be 'l' (common abbreviation) and 'l' is found in the answer.
This may be the basis of clue (or it may be nonsense).
'for' acts as a link.
(Other definitions for local that I've seen before include "Belonging to a particular place" , "One's nearest pub" , "Near - one's pub" , "(Pub) of the district" , "Nieghbourhood pub or its customer" .)