The true story of a Staten Island soldier-hero

It was Mike Ollis’s final day in Ghazni, Afghanistan. 

After eight months, the 24-year-old Staten Islander was about to fly out to Bagram, Afghanistan, as Tom Sileo details in ‘I Have Your Back – How An American Soldier Became an International Hero’ (St. Martin’s).

But as he waited, a truck carrying 3,000lbs of explosives slammed into the walls of Ollis’s base, followed by mortars and machine gun fire.

As smoke filled the air, Taliban fighters advanced and Ollis, without any armour, returned fire amid the devastation.

“Much of the landscape was littered with body parts,” writes Sileo. “It was almost impossible to identify who had been killed or if the remains were even human.”

It was then he saw a Polish soldier dressed only in shorts. 

Caught in the crossfire was Lt. Karol Cierpica, an officer in NATO’s Reconstruction Team. Suddenly, a Taliban fighter wearing a suicide bomb vest charged at Cierpica – and Ollis leapt in the way. 

“In that split-second moment, the thought most likely filling the mind of Ollis was saving the life of the Polish soldier he only just met,” writes Sileo.

Ollis bore the brunt of the blast and despite medical assistance was pronounced dead, just three weeks before his 25^th birthday.

In many ways Ollis was destined to serve. His father, Bob, was wounded during the Vietnam War’s Tet Offensive and Ollis’s decision was cemented by 9/11, when 274 fellow Staten Islanders died. 

“Many of Staten Island’s dead were police or firefighters,” writes Sileo. “Their ultimate sacrifice deeply inspired Mike.”

Ollis was 17 when he presented his folks with a Parent Consent for Enlistment form. Soon, he toured Iraq where his friend was seriously injured in a bombing.

On his first Afghanistan deployment, a suicide bomb killed six colleagues. Ollis rescued 11 but “pulling out bodies had started taking a huge toll on Mike,” writes Sileo.

On January 19, 2013, Mike Ollis, now Staff Sergeant, returned to Afghanistan, to join Allied forces in NATO’s International Security Assistance Force in Ghazni.

He never returned.

Today, Ollis’s spirit lives on in the SSG Ollis Freedom Foundation and the Staten Island ferry, ‘SSG Michael H. Ollis’, which entered service in February 2022.

Lt. Karol Cierpica, meanwhile, had a son in 2015. 

He called him ‘Michael’.

— Gavin Newsham