World: A GRIM REMINDER THAT THE WAR GOES ON

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IT was 2 a.m. in the dark of the night. All across the war-weary country, South Vietnamese were sleeping off the revelry of Tet, Viet Nam's long est and happiest holiday. This three-day Tet had passed peacefully, unlike the nightmare of the year before, when more than 36,000 of the Communists' finest assault troops smashed into South Viet Nam's cities and towns. Then suddenly, in a whoosh of rockets and thud of mortars, the nightmare seemed about to begin again. Barely 19 hours after they had ended a self-imposed, week-long Tet truce, Communist gunners launched coordinated rocket and mortar attacks on more than 100 cities, towns and military installations throughout South Viet Nam, including the capital of Saigon.

This time, at least in the first phases of the attacks, the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong appeared to be aiming primarily at military targets, not civilians.

However, several Soviet-built 122-mm.

rockets fell into Saigon — the first such bombardment of South Vietnamese ci vilian areas since Lyndon Johnson or dered a bombing halt over North Viet Nam last Oct. 31. The big missiles, fired from the outskirts of the capital, whistled in during the early-morning hours in two brief barrages. One round fell into the central market, smashing vendors' stalls and killing a Vietnamese woman. The others dropped into residential areas, where at least five persons died.

Infantry on Guard. Danang, the country's second largest city and the coastal hub of northernmost I Corps, suffered greater damage. Rockets and mortar rounds poured into the city as well as into surrounding military installations. Chain explosions rocked an ammunition dump, setting huge fires raging and pumping black smoke high into the sky. A Marine hangar at the airfield was damaged. Incoming rounds hit a bare 200 yards from the headquarters of the Third Marine Amphibious Force, damaging the naval support headquarters just across the Danang River.

Other attacks shook the imperial city of Hue, Pleiku in the Central Highlands and the sprawling supply base at Cam Ranh Bay. In the wake of the bombardments, the Communists attempted a few scattered small-scale ground probes. Infiltrating Communist infantry and sappers were loose in Danang, and local allied commanders decreed a 24-hour curfew to aid in flushing them out. In Saigon, a demolition squad slammed B40 rocket rounds into an isolated precinct station and killed four policemen before being driven off with their own loss of four dead. Long Binh, a U.S. headquarters and logistics base just north of Saigon, was hit by 80 mortar rounds and a number of rockets. Nearly a dozen Communist troopers penetrated Long Binh's defensive wire, but were soon repelled. A similar probe tested the defenses of nearby Bien Hoa airbase. Northwest of Saigon, two Communist battalions tangled with a unit of the 25th U.S. Division.