In Star Wars Special: C-3PO #1 from Marvel Comics, written by James Robinson with art by Tony Harris, we got the answer about C-3PO and why he had a red arm, in a story that takes place before the events of Force Awakens.
In a story called "The Phantom Limb," C-3PO and a group of four other droids hurry off of a crashed Resistance ship before it explodes.
C-3PO mentions a Captain Hoff and the ship’s crew, and it’s implied they all died in the crash and subsequent explosion, leaving the droids to complete their mission by reaching a downed ship across the planet.
Their mission is to escort a First Order protocol droid, named OMRI, to the Resistance so they can datamine him for the location of the captured Admiral Ackbar.
As they journey the hostile planet full of savage creatures and perilous obstacles, C-3PO and OMRI have an ongoing conversation about the nature of being a droid and how they fall on either side of a larger conflict. They talk about how droids often have their memories wiped, and how they sometimes remember their older lives, with C-3PO vaguely recounting the events of the prequel trilogy, which leads to them realizing they could have once fought for the other side and never know it.
They are beset by alien beasts along their journey, and at one point C-3PO is grabbed by the tentacle of a large monster that rips his arm off, but he was able to escape with the help of OMRI.
The other droids, however, were not so lucky. By the time the ship is in sight, they’ve all been destroyed, leaving just C-3PO and OMRI. Acid rain begins to pour down, so they take cover just yards away from their goal. OMRI decides to choose friendship over choosing a side, and so he gives Ackbar’s whereabouts to C-3PO and then sacrifices himself by walking into the acid rain in order to activate the homing beacon. The rain eats away at OMRI’s plating, revealing red primer underneath.
C-3PO gets rescued by Poe Dameron and BB-8, and he keeps the red arm, wearing it as a reminder of the droid friends he lost and the lesson OMRI taught him.
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