'NODE' undeclared (first use in this function)

[aamir121a]

I am developing a double linked list in C ( development environment ) is QT with mingw32 4.7 gcc / g++ compiler ,

in the header file I have defined struct as follows

#ifndef LINKEDLIST_H
#define LINKEDLIST_H


#include <stdlib.h>
#include <sys/stat.h>
#include <signal.h>
#ifndef NULL
#define NULL 0
#endif

#ifdef __cplusplus
extern "C" {
#endif
/* Function code goees here  */

struct NODE
{
    char val;
    int  pos;
    struct NODE *previous, *next;
};

struct NODE *CreateList();

#ifdef __cplusplus
}
#endif


#endif // LINKEDLIST_H

and C file

#include "LinkedList.h"

struct NODE *CreateList()
{
    struct NODE *node;
    node = (NODE *)malloc(sizeof(NODE));
    if(node == NULL){
        return NULL;
    }
    node->pos =0;
    node->previous = NULL;
    node->next = NULL;
    return node;
}

when compiling I am getting the following error
'NODE' undeclared (first use in this function)

and

each undeclared identifier is reported only once for each function it appears in

I have also attached the screen shot from the QT IDE

look's like the compiler is not able to pick up the definition of NODE structure
same happens in Netbeans IDE , interesting thing is if change the source file from c to cpp the error goes away .
Any help would be much appreciated .