'Button' was a British operation mandated by Lieutenant General Sir Oliver Leese’s (later Lieutenant General Sir William Slim’s) Allied Land Forces South-East Asia command to replace Slim’s (later Lieutenant General Sir Miles Dempsey’s) 14^th Army with Lieutenant General Sir Montagu Stopford’s 12^th Army in the southern part of Burma after the capture of Rangoon (summer 1945).

The headquarters of the 14^th Army was then moved to Ceylon to plan and train for the planned 'Zipper' reconquest of Malaya using Lieutenant General Sir Philip Christison’s Indian XV Corps from the Arakan western coastal region of Burma, and Lieutenant General O. L. Roberts’s newly formed Indian XXXIV Corps.