Books like Seven Men of Gascony

"Seven Men of Gascony" is one of my top 20 all-time favorite novels!If you have never read Delderfield, I suggest starting here, with this slender physical book. Second choice = "God Is An Englishman" - transportation history of England brought to life, with loot from India. It's a fat book with sequels that don't sustain the first book's energy.Third choice = "To Serve Them All My Days" (video version)***Have read most of Delderfield's books. Have not finished them all. He gets ponderous in the fat family saga stories. In the two low page count stories set in Napoleonic Iberia, this one and Too Few For Drums, R.F. has written YA-HF that I would liked to have had in a small high school library.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._F._D...The way Delderfield begins his first novel evokes the start a Shute story ... a provincial priest asking a maimed man to write a war story. (" ... others had been discouraged by the veteran's incivility.")Quotes from Prologue "'I don't know why I ever told you anything,' he said. 'It wasn't because you were a priest. Priests were never of much account in the old days. We didn't see one from one campaign to another. I'm not in the habit of talking about the past. My wife and I made a pact the night of Waterloo.'"'What sort of pact?'"'A pact to forget the past. It was our only chance.'..."The priest let his imagination wander to Paris for a moment. He saw the silent throng lining the snow-covered streets to watch the funeral procession move towards the fantastic tomb they had prepared at the Invalides. He heard the slow, mournful strains of the bands, the shuffle of the plumed horses that pulled the funeral carriage, the creak of the carriage wheels along the precise lines of the procession. He had never seen Napoleon and ... He looked at the veteran with a new interest. It gave him a pleasant shock to realize that the gaunt, nondescript man standing on the hearthrug had marched with the Emperor across the Danube plains and through the icy pine forests from Moscow to the Niemen. Great names, already part of a great legend, were as familiar to this man ..."The priest stood up and shook out the folds of his cloak. He felt slightly piqued."'I'll call in again tomorrow,' he said, and quietly left the room."The veteran sat motionless ... Then he crossed over to his bed and, stooping, dragged a hair trunk from beneath it; he groped in the interior for some large clothbound manuscript books that lay submerged among the jumble of creased clothes and papers. ..." Quotes from chapter one, where Gabriel is the first character introduced"Gabriel was an odd, dreamy young man, who had a local reputation for excessive amiability but seemed to lack ambition. ... At the time of his aunt's death he was thought to be twenty years of age, and all the lads of eighteen had been called." ..."He was known to read a good deal and had been a promising pupil at the school of the ex-priest Crichot. He and Crichot still remained on terms of pleasant intimacy, and an excellent crayon sketch of the latter, done by Gabriel during school-hours, continued to hang over Crichot's chimney-piece long after Gabriel had been forgotten in the Agen district." ..." ... His shyness had been accentuated by the circumstances of his life, spent mostly alone with the eccentric old woman who passed him off as her nephew. Nobody in Agen believed in this relationship; some suspected Gabriel of being ... "Gabriel felt that he needed advice, and the only place he could seek it was at the house of the ex-priest Crichot, his school-master. He put the letter in his pocket, locked the bakery door and went out. ..."Crichot knew all about Aunt Marie's letter. He read the statement ..."Crichot glanced at the sketch over the mantelshelf and then at Gabriel."'Do you want to become a painter?' he asked. ..."'Has it occurred to you why you have never been conscripted into the army, Gabriel?' ..."'Father,' he said at last, 'would you say that I was a good painter?' "'I would say that you could become one,' replied Crichot, glancing once more at his own portrait above the chimney-piece. "'What is required to improve myself? Practice?'"Practice, yes,' said the old man, 'but suffering too. Suffering is more important than practice.'"The young man smiled."'Then I will go!' he announced, rising."'Go where? To sea, to the Americas, to the Orient to beg your bread?'"'To fight for it,' said Gabriel."'As a young fool with an untrained paint-brush, you might do a good deal worse,' he said.""***Among my long-time all-time favorites. Once again, the section devoted to the retreat from Moscow produces vivid images on the brutal insanity of war. This is one of those books that Goodreads lists as first published in the 1970s. It was actually written in the late 1940s. **Caveat -- what follows is a Spoiler review copied and pasted from KIRKUS REVIEW"A 1949 novel set in the period of the Napoleonic Wars, which the late author published in the salad days of the mainly masculine-oriented historical novels (Kenneth Roberts, Nordhoff & Hall) before the thrust of the bosom superseded that of the bayonet. This is the familiar tale, utilized ad infinitum in WW II movies, of how a small close-knit group of infantrymen--in this case a section of seven French ""voltigers""--fight a long series of battles and die one by one, leaving a sole survivor. There's both a sneaking admiration for the noble endurance of men who fight on and on, and a passing recognition of the futility of wars staged by idols like Napoleon. The deaths match personalities: the best-liked member, a Jew, is crucified; the intellectual is shot by a firing squad for desertion; the gentle horse lover dies protecting his mount; and the grizzled sergeant dies in a last battle, while an enemy scavenger swipes the Medal of Honor from his corpse. And through it all--from the Danube to Moscow and back, a period of imprisonment in England, then gradual decimation--the caniniere Nicholette appears with her ""canteen,"" weds three times and is widowed twice. At the close, the old survivor has a dying dream of his comrades in Nicholette's wagon welcoming him aboard. You'll hate yourself in the morning, but Delderfield knew how to spring that sudsy tear. An old hat which wears well.